After agreeing to give telecast signals to Doordarshan for the second one-day international cricket match between India and Pakistan, Ten sports on Tuesday said it was not averse to an out of court settlement to end the commercial row with Prasar Bharati.
"At any time we will be too happy for out of court settlement but at the moment we have to wait for the Supreme Court ruling," Ten Sports chief Abdulrahman Bukhatir told reporters in New Delhi this morning, hours after his arrival from Dubai.
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Bukhatir said that he talked to Law and Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley last night and the minister had assured to extend every possible help. He, however, did not give details of the discussions and said that the sole purpose of his visit was to ensure that the Indian people were not deprived of telecast of the match between India and Pakistan.
Asked if Ten sports would agree for giving signals for the subsequent matches also in case there was a delay in the settlement of the case in the Supreme Court, where the sports channel had filed an appeal challenging the Madras High Court ruling, Bukhatir said that there were other commercial considerations.
Meanwhile, Jaitley told a TV channel that, "Both the competing parties should arrive at or would be able to arrive at some adequate settlement in this regard...one must make an effort to make sure that a game like this, which is almost like a religion in India, can be viewed by the maximum number of people."
Sources in Prasar Bharati also did not rule out the possibility of an out of court settlement and indicated that a meeting of officials of the national broadcaster and Ten sports could take place later in the day.
When contacted Jaitley told PTI that he had talked to Bukhatir but declined to divulge details and refused to comment on the possibility of an out of court settlement.
More news on the telecast tussle
Bukhatir said: "Our efforts will be to show all the matches to the Indian public...but we, have our commercial interests... there are other investors."
"To acquire the exclusive cricket for live broadcasting, as well as other driver content we have on the channel, it costs huge sums of money... we have invested non-stop in Ten Sports for the last two years and now the product is truly head and shoulders above all other sports channels," he said.
He, however, expressed concern that the organisations' rights investment had been damaged over the recent past and it has been "unilaterally compelled" to share its exclusive rights with third parties without any pre-determined agreements or adequate compensation.
Modi Enterprises president Lalit Modi said on the occasion that the impact of what has happened in India could be wide ranging and could hurt the channel significantly.
"If it becomes a precedent then it can reflect badly on other events like Sharjah," he said while voicing concern that lack of exclusivity could have serious repercussions on the channel's viewership, which accounts for a major income source.
"The ad revenue is there when there is a major event like the Indo-Pak series...main revenue comes from subscriptions," he said admitting that Ten Sports was getting upwards of Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) as subscription revenue from the country.
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