Rambler commented on a lawsuit against Twitch for $2.9 billion. One of the top managers said that Rambler Group does not exclude the possibility of a settlement agreement.
This is reported by Kanobu with reference to Mikhail Gershkovich, head of sports projects at Rambler.
Recall what is the essence of the conflict between the companies:
- At night it became known that Rambler wants to collect a huge amount from the American service because of the broadcasts of the English Premier League. The rights to show these matches in Russia belong to Rambler.
- The company called all the league streams on Twitch pirated and demands 5 million rubles for each. In total — 180 million rubles, that is almost $ 3 billion.
- In Twitch, the accusations are considered unfair, since the pirated content is not hosted by the site itself. She also stated that no official notifications had been received from Rambler prior to filing the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed in August. Its consideration will take place on Friday, December 20. But, according to Gershkovich, the parties are trying to resolve the conflict in a pre-trial manner.
“At the moment, negotiations are underway with Twitch to sign a settlement agreement. The service has given us tools to combat pirated broadcasts and now we are talking only about compensation for damage caused from August to November,” he said.
Gershkovich also explained the amount of the claim. According to him, $2.9 billion is “technical and maximum possible” compensation. It will be clarified. Rambler itself paid €7 million for the rights to show three seasons of the English Premier League, according to Kommersant.
We should add that in recent days, Rambler has become the main participant in two legal scandals in the IT and near-gaming spheres at once. Recently, searches were reported in Nginx — they were also initiated by Rambler. The stumbling block was one of the largest global web servers. The Russian company claims that the rights to it belong to it. Read more here.
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