Russian sports broadcaster Match TV, owned by Gazprom Media, is reported to have become the subject of a lawsuit in Rambler Media Group’s crackdown on what it claims is illicit broadcasts of the English Premier League club football competition.
State news agency Tass reported on December 26 that Rambler has filed the lawsuit to stop Match TV broadcasting video clips of Premier League matches.
Rambler’s head of sports, Mikhail Gershkovich, said: “The Rambler Group has already filed a lawsuit with the Moscow City Court regarding Match TV, in which we only demanded the [stoppage of] the distribution of illegal content – individual fragments of the video sequence of the Premier League matches. A court case has not been set yet.”
Amazon-owned video platform Twitch last month took down sports content following a challenge from Rambler Media Group. It earlier emerged that Rambler had secured a court ruling suspending the streaming of English Premier League football games by Twitch, with Rambler claiming that Twitch had been infringing upon its exclusive content.
Tass earlier reported that the Moscow City Court suspended Twitch’s live streaming of matches as an interim measure of protection in a lawsuit filed by Rambler Internet Holding, part of the Rambler Group.
A court spokesperson had said that the suspension would cover the 2019-20 to 2021-22 Premier League seasons. Rambler acquired exclusive rights across those three seasons under a deal struck in April with matches broadcast via OTT platform Okko Sport.