Solar brings ABS-CBN to court over NBA games dispute

SOLAR ENTERTAINMENT Corp. has brought to court its dispute with ABS-CBN Corp. over the latter’s airing of sports channels BTV and NBA Premium TV without paying carriage fees estimated at P659 million.

In a statement on Tuesday, Solar said the Mandaluyong Regional Trial Court on May 16 issued an order to garnish the bank accounts and other assets of ABSCBN and its cable affiliate SkyCable, for airing Solar’s NBA channels without paying carriage fees for the last three years.

Under the order, Solar is also required to post a bond for P659 million, the amount it is trying to collect.

ABS-CBN and SkyCable, in a separate statement, said it filed a motion to lift the attachment and garnishment order on May 29, which the Mandaluyong court granted on the same day.

“Thus, at this time, there is no effective attachment or garnishment over any asset of ABS-CBN or SkyCable,” the Lopez-led companies said.

Solar — the local distributor of NBA games and programs for the past 16 years — has alleged that SkyCable “continued to air and make money on the NBA shows” using the former’s own channels, BTV and NBA Premium, even though its carriage contract ended in 2014.

“Solar continued to feed its two channels and to bill SkyCable, believing there was an implied renewal, an industry practice to prevent a sudden blackout of TV channels and a service disruption to subscribers,” it added.

Solar further noted that SkyCable on March 1, 2015 also ”stopped paying the carriage fees” of Destiny and Unicable that had their own contracts with Solar before they were acquired by SkyCable.

In April 2017, Solar said it decided to stop feeding SkyCable with NBA feeds after “several unheeded demand letters and realizing that SkyCable was intent on not paying.”

Solar did not provide a copy of the Mandaluyong court’s order, but quoted it as saying, “It needs to be stressed herein that the expiration of the Channel Carriage Agreements and the execution of the Television License Agreement with NBA did not relieve SkyCable of its obligation to pay channel carriage fees.”

“The basis of the channel carriage fees is SkyCable’s continuous airing of NBA Premium TV and BTV which was tolerated by Solar. This created an implied contract between the two. ABSCBN in collusion with SkyCable had no intention to pay such channel carriage fees as their objective is to become the exclusive licensee of NBA, thereby gaining full control and exclusive rights to the broadcast of NBA games in the Philippines,” the court was quoted by Solar as saying.

Meanwhile, ABS- CBN addressed Solar’s allegations, saying the two companies entered into a license agreement with NBA Properties in 2014.

“Since ABS-CBN was paying 60% of the license fees, it considered that the same already covered the carriage fees of SkyCable. Unfortunately, Solar disagreed. Despite the good faith attempts of ABS-CBN and SkyCable to resolve the dispute amicably, Solar cut off the NBA feed to SkyCable and filed this complaint,” the media giant said.

“We will submit our answer with counterclaims to this complaint. We are confident we will prevail,” ABS- CBN added. —