Subramanian Swamy to challenge Star TV's IPL media rights in SC

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday said that the way the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) insisted on conducting a manual auction because they had pre planned to favour Star TV in connections with the Indian Premier League (IPL) media right auction that was held in Mumbai on Monday (September 4).

Star India bagged the consolidated broadcasting rights (India, overseas broadcast and digital) of the lucrative cricket league with a whopping bid of Rs. 16,347.50 crores, for the next five years with their only other broadcast competitor, Sony Pictures, losing out its decade old rights for the league. This bid amounts to Rs. 54 cr. for each match, makes it the most expensive tournament in cricket history.

Swamy told ANI, “BCCI was so insistent to go ahead with manual auction shows they were implementing plan to favor Star TV.” Earlier in the day, he had said that he would challenge the manual auction of IPL media rights, in the Supreme Court.

Plan to challenge

Swamy also took to Twitter to announce the same, “Very soon, I will challenge in SC the manual auction of IPL Media Right given to Star conglomerate.” He further said that 1/3 rd of India’s BM is due to IPL. He stated that Rajiv Shukla, as IPL president favoured Star India to grab the media rights and allegedly, Shukla was paid INR 100 crores out of the advertising revenue that Star India collected.

In July, the apex court had sought a response from BCCI on Swamy’s plea that the media rights should be e-auctioned to ensure transparency as the rights are to be given for the next five years. Following this, the court, in August, refused to direct the board to conduct e-auctioning for awarding media rights relating to the IPL matches.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chadrachud did not consider the plea put up by the BJP leader. Swamy wanted to file an interim application highlighting alleged collusion and conflict of interest on behalf of a BCCI functionary who also runs a news channel.