 IPL's suspended chairman, Lalit Modi was dealt another blow by the BCCI when they served him another notice. The charges for the notice on this occasion
were 'underselling the theatrical rights of the tournament', which he had sold
the contract to an agency to further distribute it the various theatres. The other
charge also involved in the show cause notice was for going ahead with the mid-over
advertising slots during Indian Premier League matches last season without
the explicit permission of the BCCI.
Already, Modi is reeling from having to reply to two charges earlier, and these
include a variety of charges related to his role in the a couple of franchises
like Punjab an Rajasthan, and about his idea and plan of having a parallel cricket
league which will ensure that the cricketers will have to give up on international
cricket and join it. The BCCI had earlier been informed of the same by the ECB
alleging that the plan had been "detrimental to Indian cricket, English
cricket and world cricket at large."
This third charge is based on the Rs 330-crore ($71.2 million) deal last November
with Entertainment & Sports Direct (ESD), which won the rights to telecast
the IPL games world over, in cinema houses. The rights were obtained by ESD
for a period of ten years. ESD beat competition from Triplecom Media to win
the same, but the BCCI's worry is that the deal was completely "underpriced".
BCCI has also asked the beleaguered chief to explain why was the contract for
the rather irritating mid-over advertisements awarded without their consent.
The earlier IPL broadcast deal had allowed the broadcaster, Multi-Screen Media
(MSM) a total of 2600 seconds of advertisement revenue, but Modi inserted another
150 seconds of the same.
The issue gets deeper when the contract was actually established with a firm
owned by Kunal Dasgupta, the former CEO of Sony and apparently a close
aide of Modi. It was said that "the board was unhappy that Modi did not
inform the governing council and worse it is the board that owns this [150-second]
slot and the money has not come in," a Governing Council official said.
Modi will reply to these charges along with the previous ones, all together.
In reply, Modi has also decided to sue Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman
for allegedly defaming him over allegations which he has described as "utterly
untrue". It was Clarke who had said that Modi had decided to go ahead with
the parallel league.
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