Not quite cricket

While cricket fans will be happy that Ten Sports has been forced to share its exclusive signals of the Indo-Pak cricket matches with Doordarshan, India’s image as a country that respects international contracts and property rights has taken a beating.

The fact is that Ten Sports won the telecast rights to the series in an open bid, and then sought to sell these to cable operators in India in order to recoup its costs and make a profit.

At this point, it was a commercial negotiation between two sets of parties. The cable operators wanted to pay Ten Sports a lower amount than the latter demanded, but surely this would have been settled by both parties depending upon their needs — just as cable subscribers were putting pressure on the operators to procure the signal, Ten Sports advertisers would have wanted as large an audience as possible.

But then, suddenly, the government steps in, and lifts the matter to the level of public interest — possibly because the series was a result of pretty adroit diplomacy on the part of the NDA government!

At one point, the information and broadcasting minister was reported to be talking of introducing an ordinance if need be, to ensure the public wasn’t deprived of the privilege of watching the matches.

No one asked the question that if public interest was so sacrosanct, why didn’t Doordarshan bid for the telecast rights? And if, as the Supreme Court has argued, the public interest over-rides contractual rights, then why not end a sorry series of such disputes by inserting a clause in all BCCI agreements that every time an Indian side plays, the telecast rights will rest with Doordarshan?

The logic of the court is far from clear. It first said, as an interim measure, that the signal be shared with Doordarshan in the public interest.

But, the question remains, what of contractual rights, surely they are sacrosanct as well? After all, once it is established that Ten Sports can be arm-twisted to give the signals free, why should any cable operator wish to enter into a long-term agreement with the company to buy the signals?

And why should advertisers enter into a contract with Ten Sports if they know their advertisements will not even be carried (Ten Sports has alleged that Doordarshan did not carry their ads, which the latter denies)?

Indeed, Doordarshan even inserted its own advertisements into the Ten Sports feed, and earned around Rs 10 crore on the first match.

Now, it is possible that eventually the courts will settle the matter to everyone’s satisfaction and Doordarshan will be asked to give Ten Sports all the money it earns on the telecast, but that still doesn’t settle the issue of whether contractual rights can be violated and the matter be settled later.

It doesn’t help that, in recent times, the government has been playing the ‘heavy’ too often, whether it is public share issues or telecom disputes. No one protests too loudly because it is dangerous to take on the state. But to borrow a phrase from the great game, this simply isn’t cricket.