Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, has agreed to modify a disclaimer accompanying its ‘season pass’ advertisement that is being aired during the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) series. The move follows a petition filed by Reliance Jio Infocomm before the Delhi High Court accused Airtel of misleading advertisements.
In its petition filed before the court, RJio accused Airtel of advertisements that “explicitly and falsely proclaim that the company is offering live and free access to Twenty-Twenty (T20) cricket coverage”.
Further, the ads “falsely” state that a subscriber need to obtain just a 4G SIM from Airtel and download Airtel TV app to obtain a virtual ‘season pass’ that provides live and free access to T20 coverage, petition added.
The advertisements, according to RJio’s petition, are “deliberately deceptive, misrepresenting and misleading in their content” as a subscriber will incur charges for data consumed to download or live stream the matches. The charges will be as per the data plan availed of by the subscriber and thus is not free.
“A frivolous complaint was filed against Airtel’s new ad campaign in the Delhi High Court seeking a stay on the same. No stay was granted. In fact, the High Court has suggested minor clarifications to the existing disclaimers. After seeing the order we will take appropriate steps. Our ad campaign will continue,” an Airtel spokesperson said.
In its argument, Airtel counsels termed RJio as a “jealous competitor” and stated what was meant by ‘free subscription’ is free subscription of Hotstar network and whereas the advertisement specifically provides if one intends to watch the game one has to use data as per a user’s plan.
However, during the course of the arguments, Airtel counsel under instructions also agreed to add that the “subscription of Hotstar shall only be free and the data charges will be as per the subscriber’s tariff plan”.