BCCI case advanced to facilitate bidding

Delhi High Court advances date of hearing from Dec 12 to Dec 1

The Dehi High Court today advanced the date of hearing on the cricket telecast rights case from December 12 to December 1. Earlier, a division bench of Justices MK Sharma and BN Chaturvedi had restrained the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) from opening the financial bids till December 12, which was to be the next date of hearing.

In an application filed through its counsel Radha Rangaswami, BCCI had sought advancement of the hearing to November 28 or earlier in view of three test series against Sri Lanka commencing on December 2 in India.

BCCI argued that the licencees would need time to mobilise and procure advertisements as the cost of production of live telecast of test matches was higher than that of one-day international (ODI) matches and the generation of revenue was also less primarily due to less viewership.

BCCI said for live telecast of international cricket matches, sophisticated technical equipment have to be imported from abroad after obtaining the required permissions from various ministries and statutory bodies. Besides, production units have to work out logistics like laying of cables for live telecast of test matches to be played in Chennai (December 2-6), Delhi (December 10-14) and Kanpur (December 18-22).

According to BCCI, it was constrained to enter into an interim arrangement for telecast of seven ODI matches between October 25 and November 28. While ESPN-Star, Prasar Bharti and Sony-Set Max had qualified for the bid for the cricket telecast rights in India for the next four years on technical grounds, telecast rights were given to Doordarshan and production rights to Trans World International (TWI). Zee Telefilms was found ineligible.

Zee Telefilms had moved the court seeking restraint on BCCI from deciding the bids as according to it, the board would prejudice the channel's interests and had also demanded quashing of BCCI's 'invitation to tender' (ITT) for cricket telecast rights in India on the ground that the eligibility conditions were framed so as to 'exclude' it and/or other Indian television channels in favour of ESPN Star Sports.

Zee had also sought direction to BCCI to consider it for the bid of telecasting cricket matches between October 2005 and September 2009.

BCCI wanted only those channels having three years' experience as direct first original licencee from any event owner of telecasting live international cricket matches in each of the three years "" 2002, 2003 and 2004 ""- to bid for the telecast rights, Zee had alleged.

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Howazzat!

Licencees will need time to mobilise and procure advertisements as the cost of production of live telecast of test matches is higher than that of one-day internationals

For live telecast of international cricket matches, sophisticated technical equipment have to be imported from abroad

It was constrained to enter into an interim arrangement for telecast of seven ODI matches between October 25 and November 28