DUSHANBE, June 2, Asia-Plus - Tajikistan’s Committee for TV and Radio-broadcasting, national TV and several companies are currently negotiating with some foreign companies the issue of broadcasting the 2007 World Cup in Tajikistan, Samad Hikmatov, deputy head of the Committee for TV and Radio-broadcasting, said.  

“At present we are conducting negotiations with several foreign companies, including Kazakhstan’s “Eurasia+ORT”, which has an exclusive right of broadcasting the 2007 World Cup over the Central Asian region, on broadcasting the championship in Tajikistan,” said Mr. Hikmatov, “Yesterday, we negotiated this issue in Dushanbe with representatives from the “Eurasia+ORT” company, but we have not yet come to any concrete decision.”   According to him, the negotiations with this company will continue today afternoon.  “All problems have commercial character, but I hope we will be able to come to any decision.” 

In the meantime, the second channel of Tajik national TV, “Safina”, is also negotiating this issue with some Russian, Iranian and Kazakh companies.  “We have not yet reached agreement with any of them,” the “Safina” source said.  At the same time, the source assured that viewers of the “Safina” channel would be bale to see the championship.     

According to reliable sources, 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.   

The source says that 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.  According to the source, if any company in Tajikistan agrees to acquire the broadcasting right it will have to provide further US$25,000 for purchasing the necessary relay equipment.  

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.