Malaysian Football League (MFL) today has taken legal action against Telekom Malaysia (TM) due to contract breach revolving sponsorship and broadcast rights for 2019. The announcement came barely a week after MFL revealed that it has terminated the sponsorship contract with TM.
MFL has also stated that the company is demanding more than RM 400 million through the lawsuit which was filed at the High Court, Kuala Lumpur. In a filing to Bursa Malaysia, TM acknowledged that it has indeed received the lawsuit from MFL and has instructed its legal team to defend the company.
According to the original deal which was signed in January 2018, TM has agreed to become the main sponsor for Liga Super and Piala Malaysia as well as co-sponsor for Piala FA until 2025. Hence, that is the reason why the first two competitions were called unifi Liga Super and unifi Piala Malaysia last year.
At the same, all three competitions were shown through several dedicated channels on unifi TV. However, the broadcast was not exclusive to TM though since they are also shown through iflix who has remained as MFL’s partner for 2019.
In a statement released by TM on 18 March, the company revealed that it no longer sponsoring Malaysian League starting from this year onwards. TM has also denied that it didn’t meet any obligations and stated that the company has decided to terminate the partnership on 1 November 2018 as both parties not able to fully agree on certain “fundamental commercial terms” of the agreement.
The timing of this legal by MFL certain doesn’t bode well for TM who itself is going transformation after it went through a rather turbulent year that is 2018. Not only that, the amount that involved in the lawsuit is rather substantial which could affect the company in a huge way.
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