NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre and Prasar Bharati on a petition filed by Ten Sports seeking a direction not to interfere with its exclusive rights to telecast the forthcoming cricket tri-series featuring India, Sir Lanka and South Africa and four other events.

A Bench consisting of Justices Ashok Bhan and Markandey Katju also issued notice on its plea challenging the constitutional validity of revised guidelines, issued by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, making it mandatory for all television channels to share the live feed of all major sport events with Doordarshan whether or not India was a participant. The Bench listed the case for further hearing on July 31.

The petitioner said the tri-series was to be played in Sri Lanka from August 14 to 29. Four other major events — hockey, champion trophies for men and women; the U.S. Open tennis tournament and World Cup Hockey — men and women trophies — were taking place in the next couple of months.

The channel said it had acquired exclusive live telecast rights for all these events. In particular, for the tri-series it had last year acquired rights for four years from the Sri Lankan Cricket Board at a cost of about Rs. 218.60 crore. It would suffer a loss of Rs. 8 crore a day in terms of advertisements during the tri-series alone if the feed was shared with Doordarshan.

The channel prayed for a direction to restrain Prasar Bharati from compelling it to share live feeds of all these events.

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