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TEN Sports moves court over sharing feed

TEN Sports, the television channel who have the rights to West Indies cricket, have moved the Supreme Court in India in a bid to prevent Doordarshan from also telecasting the matches in India's forthcoming tour live

Cricinfo staff
06-May-2006
TEN Sports, the television channel who have the rights to West Indies cricket, have moved the Supreme Court in India in a bid to prevent Doordarshan from also telecasting the matches in India's forthcoming tour live. They moved the court on Friday restraining Doordarshan from downlinking the live feed. The matter will be heard on Tuesday.
TEN Sports' move comes a step ahead of Doordarshan making the demand to have access to the live pictures, through a provision that was put in place by the Indian government in 2005. This provision makes it mandatory for private television channels to share content of national interest - and cricket falls in this purview - with Prasar Bharti, the parent company of Doordarshan.
TEN Sports has argued that there is a petition questioning the constitutional validity of the 2005 provision, and has said that if a stay was not granted this petition would become infructuous as the series will be over before a verdict was passed. India begin their five-ODI, three-Test tour on May 18.
The plea from TEN Sports also argued that the channel had paid more than US$ 100 million for the rights to broadcast cricket played in West Indies, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and that it would be unfair to force them to share the live feed with Doordarshan. TEN Sports also said that it had sold the country rights to Set Discovery Pvt. Ltd.
Doordarshan offered to telecast the feed without deleting the advertisements TEN Sports has sold, The Telegraph reported, but apparently the channel was not satisfied with this and wanted to be paid for the feed.