LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board has announced the consortium of Tower Sports and Delhi-headquartered SportzWorkz as its broadcast production partner for the HBL Pakistan Super League 2020, which will be held across Karachi, Lahore, Multan and Rawalpindi from 20 February to 22 March.
The appointment was finalized following a tender process as per the Pakistan Procurement Rules 2004. The consortium had submitted the lowest evaluated bid.
Tower Sports is a Pakistan-registered company while SportzWorkz has a wholly owned subsidiary registered in Singapore, and, together, they bring a powerful and respected crew of production management team who have a great wealth of experience of quality cricket production.
It is worth recalling that IMG-Reliance earlier held the broadcast production rights to the PSL. But following the Pulwama terror attack of February 2019, had pulled the plug on its contract as the prevailing sentiment was to cut off all contact with Pakistan. DSports, which had the India broadcast rights for the PSL (the channel’s biggest property at the time in terms of TV ratings), soon followed suit, which meant that there was no telecast of PSL 2019 in the country.
Coming back to the the PSL production arrangement, Tower Sports and SportzWorkz will also work to train Pakistani camerapersons and technical crew. This development program is being put in place with an aim to enhance the broadcast production skills of resources available in Pakistan.
The production team is led by Dubai-based industry stalwart Chris McDonald and supported by Stephen Norris. Both McDonald (as the first CEO and one of the founding members) and Norris were earlier with Ten Sports (before its buyout by the Zee Network).
It bears noting that McDonald came on board as chairman of SportzWorkz (the company founded by industry veterans Gaurav Bahal and Vishal Arora) a little over a month ago, as too, did Norris.
Norris has over 30 years of sports media and production experience and was instrumental in the successful launch of BT Sports in the UK and part of the team that launched Ten Sports in South Asia. He was also the head of Production at Ten Sports and helped them become the largest cricket producer in the world, including the production of all Pakistan cricket matches from 2000 to 2006.
Other notable members of the crew include Tim Finlay, Louwrens Rensburg and Graham Rendell.
Finlay has over 30 years of live production experience including work with BPL, SLPL, BCCI and the Australian Open.
Rensburg has worked as executive producer for SuperSport and has worked on the Cricket World Cup as well as bilateral cricket for South Africa, England and Pakistan.
Rendell brings with him 25 years of live production experience including bilateral cricket for Pakistan and the IPL.
PSL Project executive Shoaib Naveed said: “We are excited to have such experienced personnel on board for the live production of HBL Pakistan Super League.
“Since the very first HBL PSL season, we have endeavored to provide world-class production for our fans and media partners and this year, with the wealth of experience that Tower Sports and SportzWorkz bring with their team, we aim to further enhance our production experience.”
McDonald said: “A part of our commitment to the PCB and to Pakistan itself is to train local TV production professions on delivering a state of the art, top level, international live cricket production.
“We will be developing local capacity by conducting on venue and classroom style training during the PSL for Pakistan professionals interested in having a career in sports production. Our goal, simply put, is to have a majority Pakistani crew in two to three years from now.”
