New Delhi, March 17
The uncertainty over the telecast of the India-Pakistan cricket series on Doordarshan (DD) was over today with the Supreme Court directing international sports channel Ten Sports to share its exclusive live signals of the remaining matches with the national network. Doordarshan was directed to deposit Rs 50 crore as guarantee money.
Making its Monday’s interim direction more stringent, a Bench of Mr Chief Justice V. N. Khare, Mr Justice N. Santosh Hegde and Mr Justice S. H. Kapadia directed Ten Sports to “feed” its signals of the remaining three one-day internationals and the test matches to DD and DD was directed to display the sports channel’s logo.
But the court, which issued notice to Prasar Bharati on Ten Sports’ contempt petition for “showing” its ads during the Rawalpindi match yesterday, directed DD not to show any of its ads during the telecast and 30 minutes before the start and 30 minutes after end of the match to ensure protection of the sports channel’s commercial interests.
Since DD had not made any bid for buying the cricket match rights from the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), it has “no right over the telecast and cannot use it for commercial gains”, the Bench said. It added that the direction was issued taking into account the larger public interest involved because the people wanted to see the matches.
The court specifically directed DD not telecast its signals of the matches to West Asia and ensure their blocking to the Far East, if it was technically feasible, to ensure the protection of Ten Sports’ commercial interests in these regions.
While Prasar Bharati has deposited Rs 10 crore as per the March 14 order of the Supreme Court, it was directed to deposit Rs 40 crore more within a week. The amount would remain in a fixed account with a nationalised bank for three months as guarantee money, the court said.
While posting the matter for final disposal on April 15, it said the damage or loss likely to be suffered by Ten Sports and its local distributor, Modi Entertainment Network, would be computed during the hearing.
The direction came on Ten Sports’ appeal against the Madras High Court’s order directing it to feed India-Pakistan cricket matches’ signals to DD.
In the beginning of the hearing, the court asked counsel from both sides whether any efforts were being made for an out-of-court settlement. Ten Sports’ lawyer Kapil Sibal said there was no question of that. “No negotiations are going on and the media reports in this regard are false,” Sibal said. “Law Minister Arun Jaitley had only a five-minute contact with Ten Sports chief Abdul Rehman Bukhatir, but there was no meeting
at any level. There was no attempt by the government to contact us thereafter,” he said.
But Attorney-General Soli J. Sorabjee contested Sibal’s claim and told the court that several attempts were made to contact Ten Sports officials. “We are still ready to negotiate with them and the Prasar Bharati chief is ready to fly to Dubai to sort out the issue,” he said.
Sorabjee said there was no strength in Ten Sports’ argument that ‘simulcast’ of matches by it and DD was not possible. They have an arrangement with Pakistan TV for ‘simulcast’ for merely $ 0.5 million, while DD was offering them $ 10 million, Sorabjee said.
When the court asked Sibal and Modi Entertainment’s lawyer Harish Salve about the likely damage or loss to their clients on account of sharing the telecast with DD, they said the actual amount could not be projected as it had to be computed as per the subscriber base and various other factors. But the future loss could be in the range of Rs 208 crore to them, they said.
The Bench did not agree with their contention and said, “Prima facie, we are of the view that it was not difficult to calculate”.
Ten Sports and Modi Entertainment counsel also rejected the proposal of Sorabjee for showing DD ads with those of Ten Sports during the telecast and keeping of the entire revenue generated from it in a separate account till the damages to the former were determined.
When Sibal at the end of his submission said that no signal should go out from the court that during the era of globalisation, it was not safe to have international contracts like this in India as it could have serious ramifications on investments in future, Sorabjee took a strong exception to it, saying, “It amounts to terrorising the court.”
