New Delhi, March 15
In view of the tough
posture taken by international sports channel Ten Sports over sharing live
telecast of the Indo-Pakistan cricket series with Doordarshan (DD) unless $25
million (US) were paid to it by the latter, the Supreme Court in an interim
measure today directed the channel to “feed” DD with signals of the Rawalpindi
one-day tie tomorrow.
A Bench of Chief Justice V.N. Khare, Mr Justice N.
Santosh Hegde and Mr Justice S.H. Kapadia directed Taj (India) Pvt Ltd, a
subsidiary of Dubai-based company Taj TV Pvt Ltd, which owns Ten Sports, to feed
the signals to DD tomorrow in view of the great public interest involved in the
game. In turn, DD was directed to deposit Rs 10 crore as guarantee money with
the apex court registry within two days.
The court further directed DD to show
all the advertisements booked by Taj TV to be displayed during the cricket
telecast along with the “Ten Sports” logo.
Despite the court’s specific
direction, Taj India’s counsel Kapil Sibal said his client could not guarantee
providing signals to DD unless the same were made available to it by the
Dubai-based company, which had the “exclusive” right of the telecast of all
cricket matches from Pakistan for the next five years under a $ 50 million
contract with the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).
He said there should not be
such a direction as it might result in hauling of his client for contempt of
court.
Posting further hearing till March 17 on an appeal by Ten Sports against
the Madras High Court’s interim order on Friday asking it to provide the cricket
matches signals to DD, the Bench said, “We do not want to pre-judge the matter,
we will see if you are in contempt on Wednesday.”
Taj’s counsel outrightly
rejected the offer of $ 10 million made by Attorney-General Soli Sorabjee and
Additional Solicitor-General Kirit Raval on behalf of DD for sharing the
telecast of the cricket series in Pakistan with DD.
Mr Sorabjee said the demand
of $ 25 million by Taj India, was “highly unreasonable” considering the fact
that their entire contract with the PCB for five years was worth $ 50 million.
“They want to earn half of the amount just in one series,” Mr Sorabjee
said.
Not budging from its stated stand, Taj India’s counsel said, “The
proposal is not acceptable to us as it will ruin our business. But we are ready
to share the signals free of cost with DD only in remote low cable connectivity
areas through its 200 low power transmitters in public interest.”
Some other
revenue-sharing proposals based on showing advertisements of both DD and Ten
Sports were also turned down by Taj’s counsel, contending that under its
contractual liabilities, it was not “feasible”.
Mr Sibal said there was
technical difficulty in providing the “simulcast (simultaneous telecast)”
signals to the local distributor Modi Entertainment, which would be providing it
to cable operators for distribution to homes because Ten Sports was a pay
channel and DD free to air.
Mr Sibal told the Bench that Taj TV had agreed to
share the Karachi match telecast with DD on Saturday as a “gesture” following an
undertaking given to the court though there was no direction from it.
Both Mr
Sibal and Mr Harish Salve, who appeared for Modi Entertainment, the Indian
distributor for Ten Sports, said their clients who had contractual liabilities
worth several crores would suffer heavy financial losses if signals were made
available to the DD in cable connectivity areas like metro cities and big towns
as the cable operators would prefer to distribute its signals because they were
“free to air” instead of Ten Sports, a pay channel.
While Mr Salve said Modi
was obliged to pay Rs 110 crore or 70 per cent of revenue generated on
distribution of signals to Ten Sports’ owner, Mr Sibal said the cost for it to
share the signal with DD would be nearly Rs 208 crore for one match.
