The Hindu : Ten Sports relents after hectic parleys

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 17, 2004

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Ten Sports relents after hectic parleys

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 16. After threatening to black out today's India-Pakistan cricket match in Rawalpindi on its own platform and Doordarshan, and keeping Prasar Bharati guessing all night, Ten Sports bigwigs made a turnaround this morning and decided to abide by the Supreme Court orders to `simulcast' the fixture on the national network to "continue to do business in the country.''

While the future of its business in India made Ten Sports decide in favour of cutting its losses by way of the subscription base, the Dubai-based owner of the satellite channel, Abdulrahman Bukhatir, announced the company's decision to the media in the morning after hectic parleys with his lawyers and the intervention of the Union Minister for Law, Arun Jaitley.

Concerned at the way "our rights investments have been damaged over the recent past,'' Mr. Bukhatir — who flew in here on Monday after the Government used its discretionary powers and issued him a `visa-on-arrival' to facilitate his entry into the country on short notice — said: "Ten Sports has been unilaterally compelled to share its exclusive rights with third parties without any pre-determined agreements or adequate compensation.''

Hopeful that "the Supreme Court and the Government of India will act fairly in ensuring proper compensation for rights Ten Sports has had to share,'' Mr. Bukhatir said the developments in India vis-à-vis the Indo-Pakistan series "are a fundamental blow to the system of intellectual property rights which has developed internationally.''

With the Government determined to ensure that the matches are made available on Doordarshan at any cost, its mediators apparently minced no words in telling the Ten Sports managers that they would have to show today's fixture if they wanted to do business in India which, after all, is the biggest market in the region; — a condition no satellite channel can afford to ignore. As one official put it, "it would have been catastrophic for Ten Sports not to comply since the Supreme Court's order was only for the Rawalpindi match.'' All day there was talk of a possible out-of-court settlement between Prasar Bharati and Ten Sports, but no headway had apparently been made in this direction till late evening as both parties prepared for another day in court on Wednesday. While the Government is ready to offer a "reasonable amount'' of money to Ten Sports for telecast rights to the remaining matches or have a revenue sharing arrangement with the Dubai-based company — which has exclusive radio and television rights of the series — a major concern of the satellite channel is theft of its signals.

Though Ten Sports had expressed concerns about their signals being available to anyone freely since the Doordarshan used PANAM-SAT 10 to telecast the match, the public broadcaster apparently used the same satellite with a global footprint as, according to officials, it was "technically not possible to switch over to INSAT-2E'' at short notice. Even on INSAT-2E, the signals will not be confined to India's borders as the satellite has a footprint extending over the South Asian region. To prevent such a theft, Ten Sports is sticking to its original offer of providing signals to areas with low cable penetration provided they do not fall along the borders.

But Doordarshan maintained that the logistics of carrying out such an exercise itself would take a while — "by when the series will be over'' — and is hoping to cut a deal that would allow the national broadcaster telecast rights.

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