News

Doordarshan denied telecast of West Indies tour

The Supreme Court today restrained Prasar Bharati from airing on Doordarshan the upcoming India-West Indies Test and ODI matches, the exclusive telecast rights of which are with Ten Sports.

Cricinfo staff
09-May-2006
The Supreme Court today restrained Doordarshan from downlinking the live feed of the upcoming India-West Indies Test and ODI matches, the exclusive telecast rights of which are with TEN Sports.
TEN Sports had filed a petition seeking stay of the government guidelines making it mandatory for sports channels to share feed of sporting events of national importance with Prasar Bharti.
A bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhan directed that Prasar Bharti should not take any coercive step or action for obtaining the live feed of the matches.
TEN Sports had challenged the Bombay High Court order of December 21, 2005. The matter pending before the high court was later transferred to the Supreme Court. The private channel contended that if the matches were telecast on Doordarshan it would suffer huge losses.
Earlier, the court had allowed live telecast of India-Pakistan ODIs on Doordarshan after TEN Sports and Prasar Bharti reached an agreement that the latter would deposit a sum of Rs 15 crore in court.
However, the bench justified the previous decision saying that "matches of an Indo-Pak series are different from the others ... For West Indies, many people may not be interested."