Sourav Ganguly's Lord's Moment and the Film Purse Ledger: Where Footage Licence Ends and Personality Rights Begin

Thirteen July 2026, the Lord's balcony. The shirt coming off, whirling above the head. I was in a Delhi studio that night, in front of a mic, and the sheet in front of me carried no scorecard — only timings. What happened when. Because the thing being recorded on tape that night was not primarily cricket. It was an image. Two decades later, inside a courtroom, that image has become the centre of a case that is not really about a match. It is about who owns the image — the person who ran the camera, the person who took the shirt off, or the party holding a bank guarantee receipt from the court.

Follow the ledger, not the highlight reel — the ledger remembers every bid, and every licence too.

Context: The road from the field to the film, and its toll

Before the Delhi High Court dispute makes sense, one distinction has to be nailed down: Indian cricket holds two different kinds of property, and they look almost identical.

The first is archival footage — the video recorded by the broadcaster's cameras. That belongs to the board (BCCI here, and ECB for a match played at Lord's). It can be licensed. It is a clean, documentary transaction: fee, term, territory, scope of use.

The second is personality rights — commercial control over a person's name, face, identity, and the distinctive images that immediately point to that person. A footage licence does not convey this. They are two separate receipts.

The facts on record run like this. Dusra's counsel says permission for the Lord's NatWest footage was obtained from BCCI and ECB. Ganguly and Love Films say his name, identity and that career moment have been used without permission. Love Films holds an exclusive right, under a 2026 agreement, to create and commercially exploit audiovisual content about Ganguly's life and achievements. That authorised biopic has finished filming, with a scheduled release in May 2027. Ganguly's side alleges that roughly one-third of the trailer is built on his career material, and that viewers may infer he approved the film.

What the court did is the biggest receipt in this story. The film was not stopped. But the court imposed a ₹2 crore bank guarantee and a bilingual disclaimer, and demanded a time-coded list of disputed scenes plus the authorised biopic's screenplay. That is not a final finding. It is an interim arrangement — a balance between possible rights infringement and the practical damage of halting a theatrical release a day before launch.

Core: Three receipts that carry this dispute from cricket into the film market

Receipt one — why the bank guarantee is ₹2 crore and not ₹20 crore.

The figure the court chose is the clearest signal of the economic weight of the dispute. It is not a fine, not damages. It is a security deposit — money lodged with the court so that a claimant has something concrete if infringement is eventually established. Two crore is a number that neither destroys the parties nor treats the case lightly. Had the court believed the violation was clear and grave, it would have stopped the release. Had it believed the claim was hollow, it would not have attached the condition at all. Two crore means: the matter is serious, but unproven.

Receipt two — the exclusivity premium of an authorised biopic.

Love Films' 2026 agreement rests on an economic logic: audiences will treat their film as the principal authorised account of Ganguly's life. That is the basis of the investment. If another film in the market is selling the same story, the same identity, the same moment — and doing it in the trailer, the single most-watched asset a film has — that premium erodes. This is not a copyright question. It is a differentiation question. Two films are selling one man's one moment, and one has paperwork, the other has footage permission.

Receipt three — what a time-coded list actually means.

The order for a time-coded list of disputed scenes looks technical. Its meaning is plain: quantity and placement matter. Footage that appears as a fleeting glimpse, the way it might in a news reel, carries a different legal weight. The same footage placed in the first thirty seconds of a trailer, cut to music, functioning as the film's principal draw, stops being an incidental historical reference. The court is effectively measuring the narrative weight of the moment. That is exactly where the boundary between a footage licence and personality rights will be drawn.

Step back for a moment. I remember the 2026 IPL auction day in Bengaluru, sitting in that hall with every franchise's remaining purse written on paper in front of me. The same question applied there: the number is large, but what job is it for? When a player draws ₹12 crore at auction, I never ask how big the figure is — I ask what role it buys. Rights in film work the same way. What "job" is the contested slice of Ganguly's identity doing here? If the job is pulling audiences into a cinema, its price is different from the price of a footage licence. That is the economic ground both sides are actually fighting on.

Contrarian: "We got the footage permission" is not a complete defence — and "the iconic moment is mine" is not a complete claim either

Both arguments sound robust, and both share a flaw.

The film's side argues that BCCI and ECB permissions are in hand, that the film is fictional and inspired, and that a disclaimer exists. But a footage licence gives you the right to show the video, not to commercially harvest the identity of the person in it. This is the mistake many production houses make — they obtain the archive paperwork and assume the personality paperwork came bundled with it. In the Indian sports-entertainment market, that habit is becoming expensive.

But Ganguly's side rests on ground that also needs care. Being publicly famous does not establish ownership of match footage. The board owns what its cameras shot. A documentary about that match will be built on a board licence — not on Ganguly's permission, provided it does not commercially exploit his identity. The line is thin, and the case will be fought on it.

And a word on the media's role, because I stand on that side too. Framing this as a fight between two films is easy, and it sells. But the fight is technical: archive licensing, identity use, implied endorsement, contractual exclusivity. When we turn it into hero versus imitator, we fail to hand the reader the tool to ask the right questions next time. I will also say this plainly: the court did not stop the film, so reading the interim order as a Ganguly victory is premature. There is no final judgment yet.

Takeaway: Which domino falls next

The biggest effect will not land on Ganguly or this film. It will land on the many producers who will spend the next five years making films and series about Indian cricketers. Until now, clearing the archive was considered enough. Now they will need three separate receipts: for the footage, for the identity, and for the biographical claim they are making. That will not be cheap, and it will not be quick.

One thing is clear to me. The moment that pulled a captain's shirt off a Lord's balcony in 2026 is no longer just a cricket memory. It is a commercial asset with a price, an owner to be determined, and a ledger in which every licence must be entered. The question is how thick a line the court draws through that ledger — and whether that line will protect the films that have not even been written yet.

When the authorised biopic releases in May 2027, the real distance between the two films will not be settled at the box office. It will be settled by this question: which one does the audience believe is "real" — the one with permission, or the one with the moment?