DUSHANBE , June 6, Asia-Plus - Tajikistan has not yet agreed with any of foreign companies on broadcasting the 2006 Soccer World Cup.

“Negotiations between Tajikistan ’s Committee for TV and Radio-broadcasting, national TV and several companies, including Kazakhstan ’s “ Eurasia +ORT”, on the possibility of broadcasting the world soccer championship in the republic are still ongoing,” Samad Hikmatov, deputy head of the Committee for TV and Radio-broadcasting, said.  

“At present we are considering all variants and we will make every effort to ensure that our soccer fans could be able to watch the 2006 World Cup on TV,” Mr. Hikmatov said.  .

We will recall that “ Eurasia +ORT” has an exclusive right of broadcasting the 2006 World Cup over the Central Asian region.  

As it had been reported earlier, TV companies of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan received proposals on broadcasting the World Cup from “INFRONT WM AG”, which has the right of broadcasting the World Cup games, four week ago already, but they did not respond opportunely and Kazakhstan’s “Eurasia+ORT” acquired the exclusive right of broadcasting the World Cup in the Central Asian region.  At first “Eurasia+ORT” has offered the Tajik side to acquire the right of broadcasting the championship in Tajikistan for US$100,000 but later following the negotiations it has lowered the price to US$50,000.  At present the main stumbling-block in the negotiations between the Tajik side and “ Eurasia +ORT” is the fact that “ Eurasia +ORT” offers broadcasting the matches with representation of its logotype and comments in the Russian language, while the Tajik side offers broadcasting the matches without logotype and comments.  

In the meantime, the second channel of Tajik national TV, “Safina”, is also negotiating this issue with some Russian, Iranian and Kazakh companies.