British-based satellite and broadcast production company SIS Live has claimed it is still owed £29m (€36.4m/$49.6m) from its production contract for the 2010 Commonwealth Games multi-sport event, which was hosted in New Delhi, India.
SIS signed a contract for the production rights to the 2010 Games with Indian public-service broadcaster Prasar Bharati in 2009, but the two parties have yet to reach an agreement to settle the payment.
SIS said it is owed £29m for delivering coverage of the event in India, citing unpaid charges, costs, liquidated damages and interest following a long-running legal dispute.
“It’s astonishing to come into the next Commonwealth Games to have contractors that have not been paid for the last one,” Kevin Smith, a lawyer for SIS, told UK newspaper the Guardian. “It’s institutional gridlock. We hope with a change of government now that the climate might be more amenable to a settlement being negotiated.
“If anybody had suggested to me when we signed the contract that four years on the issue would still be ongoing, I really wouldn’t have believed them. In my experience this is totally unprecedented. This is the same outside-broadcast team who won media awards for the delivery of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester (in 2002). The non-payment has harmed everybody associated with it. No one comes out of this with any glory.”
A spokesman for Jawhar Sircar, the chief executive of Prasar Bharati, said: “The matter is sub-judice therefore we would not comment on the issue.”