The Delhi high court on Wednesday allowed Nimbus to undertake marketing of the India-West Indies cricket series telecast on Doordarshan, while ordering the public broadcaster not to sell the feed to private DTH operators.
Hearing a petition filed by Nimbus, which holds the Board of Control for Cricket in India's telecast rights, Justice Sanjay Kisan Kaul accepted that Nimbus, which is providing a seven-minute delayed feed of the series to Doordarshan, would generate far higher revenues by sale of the matches telecast on Doordarshan.
While Nimbus has said it will generate revenues of Rs 22 crore through the sale of advertising and other slots during the matches on DD, the public broadcaster said it will sell the slots for Rs 4.26 crore.
Allowing Nimbus to do the marketing, Justice Kaul asked it to deposit Rs 5.5 crore with Prasar Bharati, as part of its 25 per cent share in advertisement revenues on its channel.
The court also ordered DD not to give broadcast rights of its channel to private DTH operators like TataSky and DishTV.
Earlier on Wednesday, Prasar Bharati and Nimbus Communications, who were told to share feed for the India-West Indies series with the public broadcaster, approached the Delhi high court again on the issue.
While Prasar Bharati sought live feed of the matches against Tuesday's single bench court order of a seven-minute delayed signal, Nimbus moved a plea seeking clarifications on the marketing rights for the matches.
The public broadcaster challenged the single bench order, citing the government's uplinking guidelines that make it contingent on private broadcasters to share live feed of sporting events of national interest.
The matter was mentioned by Prasar Bharati's counsel Vijay Hansaria before a bench, comprising Chief Justice M K Sharma and Justice Sanjiv Khanna, seeking simultaneous telecast of the matches. He pressed for an urgent hearing on Wednesday, but the court fixed the matter for Thursday.
Meanwhile, Nimbus also filed a fresh plea seeking clarifications on marketing rights.
The tussle between the two broadcasters had deprived millions of non-cable viewers of watching the first one-day international of the series on Sunday.
