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Dish Scores Partial Legal Victory Over ESPN, Will Receive a Fraction of the $153 Million Sought in Dispute

Mar 1, 2013  •  Post A Comment

Dish Network has scored a partial victory in court, winning one out of four claims it brought against Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN over the terms of a sports programming contract, reports Bloomberg.

A jury awarded Dish $4.85 million, only a fraction of the $153 million it had sought, the story notes.

The piece reports: "Satellite service Dish, the third-largest pay-television provider, sued ESPN in 2009 for violating a so-called most-favored-nation clause in their distribution agreement, which it said requires the sports network to offer Dish the same terms it offers a competitor. The 10-person jury in Manhattan federal court reached the verdict yesterday in its second day of deliberations."

Dish claimed that ESPN offered lower terms to distributors such as Comcast and DirecTV, but the jury found that ESPN breached the contract only in one claim, involving the Spanish-language ESPN Deportes, the story says.

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