April 2004
Court tells Indian cable channels that it's not cricket.
Ever since the dawn of the satellite and digital television age there have been scuffles, often highly public, over rights to broadcast major sporting events often with the license fees rising to millions in open price wars between channels.
Such ratings battles have usually only been publicised within the UK arena for example the loss by the BBC of rights of coverage of the annual Oxford Cambridge Boat Race to ITV. However the Indian courts have recently made an important decision which has again brought the issue to the forefront in the international arena.
Taj Television had bought the exclusive rights for its channel Ten Sports to show the recent India v. Pakistan cricket test series. Several other Indian channels opted to ignore the fact that an exclusive licence was in place and broadcast the games anyway. Understandably Taj were a little annoyed as their target audience became somewhat diluted. They applied to the Delhi High Court for an interim injunction preventing 36 other broadcasters from showing the games which was duly awarded. What made this case interesting was that due to the nature of Indian television there are many cable operators who aren't always immediately identifiable. The Court, very unusually, gave an open injunction for the Indian Courts to apply to any cable operator showing cricket without a licence in India without the need to return to the High Court for each individual infringement.
BRIFFA comment:
A further twist applied to this case as almost simultaneously the Supreme Court of India judged that Taj and Ten Sport should not have a monopoly over the broadcast of cricket as it is a national passion and many more remote areas of India cannot access cable channels therefore effectively debarring them from anything other than terrestrial TV. It was agreed that terrestrial channel Doordarshan could transmit the match in exchange for a sublicence fee to Taj TV.