Techfront International FZE on Saturday reiterated its regrets to the PCB over the matter
PHOTO: PCB
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) have seemingly opted for dollars over principles, after it accepted the apology from Techfront International FZE over the Pakistan Super League (PSL) live-streaming rights fiasco.
Techfront International FZE on Saturday reiterated its regrets to the PCB and sought an amicable resolution to an outstanding dispute between the parties.
According to details, the Pakistan Super League (PSL) season five was live-streamed on a foreign betting website after PCB gave their commercial rights to Techfront International FZE, who then signed a deal with a foreign betting company. Bets were placed online from countries where the practice is legal, during PSL 5. When Daily Express highlighted the issue, the PCB accepted the mistake while putting the blame on their media partners.
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Earlier this month, PSL’s Project Executive Shoaib Naveed said that the board would take strict action in the matter of granting live streaming rights to a gambling company. However, this did not materialise.
According to sources, the board only announced that it would to take action after feeling the heat from former cricketers and media over the aforementioned matter. However, taking into account the expected losses, PCB decided to settle the issue after accepting Techfront’s apology.
It should be noted that the contract with the website was for $1 million for a duration of three years, which runs till next year. The board in an internal meeting realised that no company would offer such a big amount considering the prevailing economic situation amid Covid-19.
PCB is also preparing to sell it’s the media rights deal for the next cycle (2020-2023). For a long time, the board was earning approximately 40 per cent of its revenue from the media rights deal. Hence, if it is not able to strike a good deal, due to the Covid-19 crises, it poses a great threat to the board's financial stability. PCB is hoping that the PSL media partners would also show interest in buying the broadcasting rights of Pakistan matches.
Sources further added that PCB would have been in trouble if it had decided to terminate its contract with Techfront. The live streaming agreement allowed the media partners to run betting advertisements. Hence, the media partners could have raised this point against the board.
