Cricket: Court win lets NZC breathe easier

India's attempt to kill the goose that lays the golden egg has run foul of a successful legal challenge - to the great relief of New Zealand Cricket.

Effectively the underwriter of the international game, India's lucrative television rights industry has propped up NZC's four-yearly budget for the past decade, to the extent that it still provides the lion's share of the local player payment pool.

But all that was left up in the air this month when the Indian Government announced plans to force pay television companies such as Ten, ESPN-Star Sports and Sony to share their exclusive rights packages with the country's free-to-air broadcaster, Doordarshan.

The initiative, akin to forcing Sky Television to share their rights packages with Television New Zealand, had prompted warnings of reduced values and significantly smaller pay-outs for all stakeholders.

The England and Wales Cricket board feared losses in the region of £10 million ($25.43 million), the ICC was preparing for a possible 100 million setback, NZC were thought to be facing a shortfall of up to $20m, and more fragile operations such as those in the West Indies and Sri Lanka were threatened with insolvency.

Now, however, NZC's bean-counters will be breathing a shade easier after reports that Dubai-based broadcaster Ten Sports had successfully appealed against the guidelines in the New Delhi Supreme Court.

The temporary stay of proceedings will be gratefully received by Ten, who paid about £8 million for the broadcasting rights to the present Pakistan-India series, and also by the ECB, who have already sold the Asian rights for India's 2007 visit for about 15 million.

NZC chief Martin Snedden told the Herald on Sunday that if the Indian Government followed through with the caveats, there were real concerns about the impact it would have on his organisation's resources.
"The revenue we generate directly out of Asia is significant enough but it also affects the dividends we receive from the ICC for tournaments like the World Cup and the Champions Trophy.

"The value of the rights for broadcasting those will obviously be affected too."

A measure of how seriously the ICC were treating the issue was the fact that the chairmen of all 10 leading cricket boards managed to convene at short notice for meetings in Karachi last week.

ICC President Ehsan Mani said later that a separate meeting on the topic of television rights in India had proved beneficial.

"It has been very helpful to draw together all of our full members and many of the major television rights holders in international cricket to discuss this important issue," he said.

"We now have a much better understanding of the potential implications of the recent Government directive regarding sports television rights in India.

"It was very important to open a wide-reaching dialogue on this issue and we will continue to monitor it along with all of these important stakeholders."

The meeting reportedly involved discussions between representatives from all ICC full member countries and several major broadcasters and media rights holders, including CSI Octagon, Doordarshan, ESPN Star Sports, Sony Entertainment Television, TEN Sports, TWI and Zee.

Meanwhile, venues for this year's ICC Champions Trophy were confirmed at an executive board meeting yesterday.

Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi will host matches in the 10-team tournament, which will start on October 7 and finish with the final in Mumbai on November 5.

The seedings for the event will be determined by the LG ICC ODI Rankings on April 1 and the match schedule will be determined afterwards.

FREE-TO-AIR THREAT IN INDIA

Who stood to lose:

* £10m - England and Wales board

* £100m - ICC

* $20m - New Zealand Cricket

* Insolvency - West Indies, Sri Lanka