Court stays award of telecast rights

The Bombay High Court today asked the cricket board not to award a contract to any party for cricket telecast rights from October 2004 to September 2008 until it decides the legal dispute between Zee Telefilms Ltd and ESPN-Star Sports over the issue.

As Zee Telefilm Ltd informed the court that it did not agree to its suggestion for fresh bidding, Chief Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud decided to hear on merits the petition filed by ESPN-Star Sports challenging the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI's) move to award contracts for telecast rights to Zee Telefilm Ltd for $308 million.

Hearing the plea made by Zee Telefilm Ltd and ESPN-Star Sports, the judges asked BCCI to make a firm commitment of not awarding the contract to any party, but the cricket board sought time for a few hours to consult its members.

The BCCI expressed its inability to make such a commitment saying the Australian cricket team would visit India to play a four-test series commencing October 6 and in keeping with International Cricket Council (ICC) rules the series would have to be telecast otherwise there would be a breach of condition of affiliation with ICC.

BCCI's counsel submitted that the cricket matches have to be recorded for the benefit of the third umpire also. Earlier, BCCI had made a statement before the court that although Zee Telefilm Ltd had won the bid, the contract had not yet been awarded to it.

In view of this statement, the court ordered the BCCI to maintain status quo over its decision and not to award a contract to anyone until the legal row between Zee Telefilm Ltd and ESPN-Star Sports was resolved.

Both ESPN-Star Sports and Zee Telefilm today urged the court to ask BCCI to give a firm commitment of not giving the contract to any third party unless their legal dispute on bagging the four-year telecast rights of cricket matches was settled.

Their counsel pointed out reports in a section of the media wherein the BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya had stated that in case the legal dispute between ESPN-Star Sports and Zee Telefilm drags on, the cricket board may consider giving the contract to Prasar Bharati for the benefit of third umpire.

The judges said soon after they cleared pending cases, they would hear on merit arguments of both sides on the petition filed by ESPN-Star Sports challenging BCCI's decision to award the telecast rights to Zee telefilm Ltd.

Zee Telefilm Ltd had yesterday filed an affidavit in the High Court saying its board of directors were not agreeable to a suggestion put by the division bench for re-bidding.

The Union government also filed an affidavit saying it had no role to play as BCCI was an autonomous body and hence award of telecast rights was solely within its jurisdiction.

The affidavit said promotion of sports, which figured in the 'state list' of the constitution, was primarily the responsibility of the state governments and national sports federations.

It said the central government only supplemented the efforts of the states and the national sports federations by providing financial assistance. Sports federations like BCCI are autonomous in their functioning and hence the award of telecast rights was solely within the jurisdiction of BCCI, the affidavit said.

Opposing espn's contention, the government affidavit said there was no question of withdrawal of recognition to BCCI as it had not come across any breach of conditions under which the sports federations were given recognition.

Espn-STAR Sports contended that Zee Telefilm Ltd was not eligible as it had violated a tender condition which stipulated that only those entities which have telecast experience of two years could apply for the contract.

Espn-star said zee telefilms did not satisfy this condition and alleged bcci deliberately gave a go-by.

It said pricewaterhouse coopers (pwc), a chartered accountancy firm was engaged by bcci to be present present at the time of opening of bids and to tabulate the financial prices mentioned in the bid copies handed over to them.

Espn-star sports, however, submitted that pwc, in a letter written to it on september six stated that "we were not required to and we did not evaluate whether the entities were qualified to participate or not."