AIS Playbox operator appeals against court injunction on its broadcast of World Cup matches
AIS Playbox operator on Tuesday appealed to the court to revoke an injunction barring the company from broadcasting the 2022 World Cup Finals on its IPTV platform.
Super Broadband Network Ltd (SBN) on Tuesday filed an appeal to the Intellectual Property and International Trade Court, seeking revocation of the court’s injunction issued last Friday ordering the company to stop showing matches from Qatar.
The injunction stated that SBN could be violating the rights of True Corporation, who claimed to have exclusive rights to broadcast half of the 64 World Cup matches on internet protocol TV (IPTV) and over the top (OTT) platforms.
In the appeal filed on Tuesday, SBN said that it had legally acquired the rights to broadcast the programme on its platform.
The company urged the court to return its rights, which had been granted to the company by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), whose resolution is to make the programme available freely for all Thais.
Earlier, True pointed out that it had signed a contract with the Sports Authority of Thailand (SAT) for exclusive broadcast of 32 matches after contributing 300 million baht to the SAT’s 1.4-billion-baht purchase of the broadcasting rights from Fifa.
True made clear that under NBTC’s “must-carry” rule, only broadcast via terrestrial TV must be made available freely, and therefore the company must retain the broadcasting rights via other channels, including IPTV and OTT.
True’s so-called exclusive rights to World Cup 2022 have been widely viewed as unfair to other operators, as the company had contributed only a part of the total amount Thailand had paid for the broadcasting rights.
