You may have to pay to watch World Cup on TV

R Sedhuraman/Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, February 4

Nearly 100 million households, who have been watching live telecast of cricket matches free until now, will have to pay for watching the World Cup matches. The arrangement changed on Wednesday after the Delhi High Court judgment that restrained Doordarshan from telecasting the matches which were to be mandatorily offered by the cable operators to their subscribers.

A Bench comprising Justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru gave the ruling on petitions filed by the BCCI and on the objections from ESPN/STAR networks.

Noting that “ESPN/STAR has paid a huge sum of money (Rs 3,851 crore) to the BCCI to purchase the content rights for the period April 2012 to March 2018,” the HC said the near live telecast of the matches by Doordarshan after receiving the feed was causing revenue loss to ESPN/STAR.

Prasar Bharati had opposed the petitioners’ plea contending that about 155 million households all over India were connected to television. Of these, 95 million were connected through cable, while 55 million were within the reach of Direct-to-Home (DTH) networks. Only about 4.6 million households were connected via the terrestrial networks of Prasar Bharati.

“ESPN/STAR wants that free broadcasting should be limited to these 4.6 million terrestrial connections” which would affect people’s right to access cultural contents, it had pleaded.

ESPN/STAR had contended that free transmission of the signals by Prasar Bharati through cable operators had affected their advertisement as well subscription revenues.

Acknowledging that Doordarshan was sharing the advertisement revenue with ESPN/STAR, the HC ruled that this however did not compensate the loss of subscription revenue. Also, the advertisement revenue ESPN/STAR would have made on its own would not be matched by Prasar Bharati.

“The live broadcasting signal shared by ESPN/STAR by virtue of Section 3 of the Sports Act with Prasar Bharati shall not be carried in the designated Doordarshan channels under the must carry obligation cast by Section 8 of the Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act on cable operators. This shall operate prospectively,” the HC held.

The Sports Act had made it mandatory for private television channels to share live feed with Doordarshan for the promotion of sports. However, the HC noted that the revenue of the BCCI, which was promoting cricket, would go down if people were able to watch the telecast free of cost. The BCCI’s primary earnings were through the sale of telecast rights, the court pointed out.