Star Sports India Pvt. Ltd. v. Prasar Bharati & Ors.
Background
Under the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007, a private broadcaster like Star Sports must share live sporting-event signals "without its advertisements" with the public broadcaster Prasar Bharati. Star Sports received a "world feed" from event organisers (like the ICC) that included sponsor logos ("On-Screen Credits," e.g. Pepsi, LG, Fly Emirates) embedded during replays, scorecards and similar features, and argued it had no control over these and that they weren't really "its" advertisements. Prasar Bharati insisted these logos still counted as advertisements that had to be stripped out before sharing, and the Delhi High Court agreed with Prasar Bharati, prompting this appeal.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the sponsor logos were genuine commercial advertisements regardless of whether they were inserted by the event organiser or the broadcaster itself: the sponsors paid for that exposure and plainly intended commercial benefit from it. Reading Section 3 of the Act purposively, the Court held the word "its" was not limited to advertisements booked by the broadcaster alone, but covered advertisements from any of the content rights owner, content holder, or broadcasting service provider named in the statute; the law's purpose was to ensure Prasar Bharati's much wider, free-to-air audience received a genuinely ad-free feed. Since the broadcaster could instead choose to share revenue with Prasar Bharati under Section 3(2) if it wanted to retain the advertisements, the appeal was dismissed with costs.
Lesson Learnt
When a law requires a service to be shared "without advertisements," courts will look at who commercially benefits from content, not just who technically inserted it: a party cannot escape a statutory obligation merely by pointing to a third party's role in the chain.