ESPN-Star Sports takes BCCI to court over TV rights

ESPN-Star Sports, who lost the bid to telecast international cricket played in India over the next four years, have challenged the Indian board's decision to award the rights to Zee Network in the Mumbai High Court.

The legal action, anticipated by many pundits, came a day after the Board of Control for Cricket in India's announcement that it intended to award the rights to Zee Network. Rik Dovey, managing director of ESPN-Star Sports, said, "Unfortunately we are left with no other option but to resort to the law in an attempt to bring fair-dealing and justice to the process. We are very clear that ESPN-Star Sports was the highest eligible bidder under the rules of bidding specified by the BCCI and now the BCCI has changed the entire process of bidding in violation of rules set by the BCCI themselves to favor our competitor by giving them an unfair advantage."

ESPN-Star Sports has contended that Zee Network are not an eligible bidder because they don't have the required experience in cricket broadcasting. RC Venkatesh, the managing director of ESPN Software India Pvt Ltd, laid down the basis for the legal action. "As described in the terms of the BCCI tender document Zee should not have been allowed to bid in the first place. Zee does even not qualify as it does not have any experience of broadcasting or producing live international cricket events as specified in the tender. Clearly the required technical evaluation of the bids has not been carried out. On Sunday, the BCCI changed the rules to unfairly disadvantage our bid without giving us any further rights to bid."

While the matter is expected to come up for hearing in the Mumbai High Court on Tuesday, September 7, the BCCI has said that it had not received any legal notice thus far. Professor Ratnakar Shetty, joint secretary of the board, told Wisden Cricinfo, "I was in the BCCI office till 6pm and at that stage we had not been served any notice." The BCCI office, in stadium house, on the premises of the Brabourne Stadium, officially functions till 5pm. Even an hour later than that they had not received any word regarding a legal notice.

Interestingly, the day before the BCCI announced its decision to hand Zee Networks the rights, Subhash Chandra, chairman Zee Network, threatened to take the BCCI to court if his company was not awarded the rights. At that time, he said: "We have presented our case completely and squarely. I only hope the transparency shown by the Board so far [in the tender process] is maintained till a decision is arrived at." Now that Zee Network has the rights, it's ESPN-Star Sports' turn to go to the courts.