Delhi HC gives landmark judgement on digital rights of sporting events

STAR India wins case regarding its exclusive cricket rights on mobile phones

In a landmark judgement regarding mobile and wireless rights, the Delhi High Court has prohibited telecom operators and Mobile Value Added Service (MVAS) providers from exploiting Star India’s exclusive cricket media rights by providing live updates of matches to their subscribers.

This is for the first time, as per Uday Shankar, CEO, STAR India, such order has come, which will lay the foundation on how the rights can be exploited and monetised on mobile platforms.  

Star India has the exclusive media rights to cricket matches organised by the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) until 2018 and it had filed a case against Crickbuzz, On Mobile and Idea Cellular in this regard.

The court, in its order on Wednesday, reaffirmed Star India’s exclusive digital rights to BCCI cricket matches on mobile as well and barred telecom operators from using match and 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 broadcast of live and contemporaneous scores to Star India by procuring a license.

"When we bid for the cricket rights last year, our idea was to create a homogenous high quality consumer experience. We had bid for all rights, including mobile and digital, where there was no monetization. We pay Rs 50 lakh per match for the digital rights, but have not monetised so far," he said.

He added that the lack of clarity on this was severely compromising 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," Shankar said.

While hearing Star India’s petition, 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 some time, 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 do not 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 plaintiff (Star India).”