MUMBAI: The Delhi High Court has prohibited telecom operators and mobile value added service providers (MVAS) from exploiting Star India’s exclusive cricket media rights by providing live updates of matches.
Star India has exclusive media rights to cricket matches organised by the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) until 2018.
The court order on Wednesday reaffirmed Star India’s exclusive digital rights to BCCI cricket matches on mobile and barred telecom operators from using match score updates for commercial gains. It asked telecom operators and MVAS providers to either disseminate score updates with a lag of 15 minutes or pay a fair share of revenue generated through the broadcast of live and contemporaneous scores to Star India by procuring a license.
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The company statement said that this is a vindication of Star India’s stand that match information and the facts generated from sporting event is proprietary right which accrues to the event organiser in the digital space.
Star India CEO Uday Shankar said, “The honourable High Court has vindicated Star India’s stand by passing this historic judgement. The lack of clarity was severely comprising the ability of rights owners to invest to create great experiences for sports fans. This decisive verdict finally creates clarity on who owns the rights and a mechanism for monetisation and fair revenue share. For me, this is a huge boost to the entire digital and mobile space. Finally, we have a foundation on which to build great products as well as successful businesses and the biggest beneficiary will be the consumer.”
The High Court also observed that providing live score updates prevents Star India from effectively monetising its exclusive rights.
“It would be just and reasonable for the defendants to either obtain a license and gain equal rights to their subscribers, or make them wait for sometime, in order to not prejudice the right of the plaintiff (Star India) to earn revenue from the match information, ” the court said in its order.
Those who don’t obtain a license from the plaintiff, may not disseminate the score update or match alert before 15 minutes from the moment such score update or match alert is telecasted or broadcasted by the plantiff.
