Mumbai: Well, there is simply no respite for Lalit Modi. Barely had he submitted his reply to the second showcause notice served on him by the BCCI when the Board of Control for Cricket in India served a third showcause notice on him over granting of theatrical rights in November last year for Indian Premier League season 3.

“A third notice has been served on Mr Modi over theatrical rights in IPL,” BCCI sources said on Monday.

On November 12, 2009, IPL had announced that Entertainment & Sports Direct (ESD) had made the highest bid, of Rs 330 crore, for its theatrical rights to matches in the league to be played in seasons 2010 through 2019.

The deal would give ESD the exclusive exhibition rights for audiences in cinema halls, stadia, water borne vessels, buses, trains, armed service establishments, hospitals, bars, hotels, restaurants, airports, railway stations, shopping malls, offices, construction sites, oil rigs, clubs, auditoriums, spas, salons and other similar public venues, as per the announcement.

It is this deal that forms the subject matter of the third notice. The main cause for concern for the Indian board, according to a BCCI source, is that the deal was completely “underpriced”. The board also wants an explanation over the contract for the mid-over advertising during the matches this year. According to the original IPL broadcast deal, Multi-Screen Media (MSM) was offered 2600 seconds to commercially exploit in each of the IPL matches. But, reportedly, Modi suggested the organisers could exploit a further 150 seconds by showing an ad when the ball was not in play between the deliveries in an over.

The contract with MSM was revised and Shashank Manohar, the BCCI president, reportedly asked Modi to float a tender at the IPL governing council meeting on March 7 for the additional 150 seconds per match. Instead, it is alleged, Modi awarded the contract on his own to a firm owned by Kunal Dasgupta, who was instrumental in Sony bagging the IPL broadcast rights before the tournament’s inaugural season. “The board is unhappy that he did not even inform the governing council, and worse, it is the board that owns this [150-second] slot and the money has not come in,” a governing council official said.

Modi has already been served two notices. The first notice was sent soon after the conclusion of IPL 3 after he was suspended from his post by the BCCI and the second one was served on May 6 based on an e-mail sent to the Board by England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) Chairman Giles Clarke. In his e-mail, Clarke levelled serious charges against Modi that the Board found “detrimental to Indian cricket, English cricket and World cricket at large”.

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