Sony back as Indian Premier League broadcaster in new Rs 8,200-crore agreement

The domestic telecast rights for the second season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will remain with Multi Screen Media (earlier known as Sony Entertainment Television). In a press release issued late on Wednesday, IPL announced that MSM and World Sports Group (WSG), the global rights holder, were now the official broadcast partners for the league.

Wednesday’s deal, worth a staggering Rs 8,200 crore—almost double last year’s ten year agreement—is valid for the next nine years through 2017 and provides MSM with the exclusive audio-visual rights for all 59 matches of the upcoming season, which is scheduled to start on April 18 in South Africa, the release said.

Telecast rights for the hugely popular cricket tournament have been in the news ever since Sony sued the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), owners of IPL, over the sudden termination of its agreement on March 15.

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Court binds BCCI until final order: NDTV emerges rights frontrunner

Even as the Bombay High Court on Tuesday reserved its order on a petition filed by Sony Entertainment challenging the termination of its contract to broadcast IPL matches by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the home ministry has said it had sent a revised tournament schedule to states for their comments. New Delhi, Jaipur and Visakhapatnam have been dropped as venues in the revised schedule submitted to the ministry on Tuesday.

In court, Sony lawyer Iqbal Chhagla stated that legal rights were yet to be established, as the notice given to Sony was not a termination letter. “The notice of termination, given on Saturday, a non-working day, would have come into effect only on March 16 (Monday),” he said. BCCI lawyer V Tulzapurkar countered this, saying that a termination letter had indeed been served. He also added that the contract with Sony was terminated because the “quality of broadcasting” was “bad”.

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