The Hindu : National : Don't interfere with Ten Sports' rights: court

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 05, 2006

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National

Don't interfere with Ten Sports' rights: court

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday restrained the Centre and Prasar Bharti from interfering with the exclusive rights of Ten Sports to telecast the coming cricket tri-series featuring India, Sri Lanka and South Africa and two other sports events.

A Bench of Justice Ashok Bhan and Justice Markandey Katju also restrained the Centre, Prasar Bharti or its agents from taking coercive steps in pursuance of the guidelines issued in April making it mandatory for television channels to share "live feed" of all major sports events telecast in India.

In view of this order, 48 billion viewers in India who did not have cable connection would not be able to watch the cricket tri-series and other major sports events. The Bench had already issued notice to the Centre on a petition from Ten Sports challenging the constitutional validity of the revised guidelines issued by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry on April 5.

The petitioner said the tri-series was to be played in Sri Lanka from August 14 to 29. Four other major sports events, including the U.S. Open Tennis tournament and the hockey World Cup for men and women, were to take place in the next couple of months.

The petitioner contended that it had acquired exclusive live telecast rights for all these events. For the tri-series, it had acquired rights for four years from the Sri Lankan Cricket Board last year at a cost of about Rs. 218.60 crore.

It said the channel would suffer a loss of Rs. eight crore a day in terms of advertisements during the cricket tri-series alone if the feed was shared with Doordarshan.

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