Mumbai: Broadcaster Sony Entertainment Television and advertising agency Dentsu India seem to be headed to the courts in a dispute around the success of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2008, The Economic Times today reported.

It said that s that broadcaster Sony withdrew from an agreement after selling almost Rs100-crore worth of ad inventory for IPL to ad agency Dentsu, 10 days after the tournament started.

Dentsu is reported to have acquired 800 seconds of advertising inventory for each of the 59 IPL matches, at a fixed base price of Rs2.1 lakh per 10 second slot. That makes an inventory total of 47,200 seconds, valued at around Rs99 crore.

For its part, Sony was to directly sell an inventory of 1,200 seconds per match to five large sponsors, averaging around 240 seconds per sponsor.

In effect, that made Dentsu the aggregator of all open advertising inventory for the IPL, with the entire retail advertising inventory being owned by the agency. Dentsu would then have exclusive rights to sell the inventory directly or through partners in its buying consortium.

However, 10 days after the IPL tournament started, IPL ratings far exceeded expectations, and even beat Start TV's premium eye-ball gatherer ''Paanchvi Pass'' by a very large margin. With Dentsu owning the marketable advertising inventory, Sony had no opportunity to harvest a windfall from the higher-than-expected ratings, which led to its decision to exit the deal with Dentsu and sell ad spots to clients itself at rates higher than what Dentsu had paid.

Quoting unnamed sources in Dentsu, the paper suggests that Sony took aboard Citibank as its sixth sponsor, and Havells as its seventh. Other clients the broadcaster sold ads to included Vodafone, Coca-Cola, Max New York Life, Godrej and Hyundai, contravening its 1,200-second-per-match commitment to Dentsu, and increasing the number of sponsors beyond the agreed five.

Consequently, feelings bordering on hostility came to the fore with clients such as ITC, whom Dentsu had brought in at base rate, but from whom Sony sought to extract higher prices.

According to Sony Entertainment Television CEO Kunal Dasgupta the deal with Dentsu never materialised in the first place, on account of a lack of financial guarantee for the tournament. Sony, the report says, had sought a guarantee backed by Dentsu's Japanese parent company, which was refused and therefore the ''deal fell through.''

Dentsu is reported to be claiming money owed by Sony as overriding commission for IPL, with the MoU document says is five per cent on the net amount of Rs178,000 on every 10 seconds out of the 47,200 seconds. Additionally, Dentsu is claiming its first right of refusal on the entire ad spots inventory on subsequent IPL seasons, or the next 2 years.

The paper said it had acquired a copy of the memorandum of understanding between the broadcaster and the agency, which Dentsu claims was binding since it had already begun selling for the tournament, and that Sony backed out once the ratings for IPL were revealed.

Dentsu and Sony are reported to be trading legal notices, on their way to litigation.