Company gets out of one deal, assigns other deal to joint venture.
Live Current Media (OTC.bb) is slowly working to distance itself from its long term cricket agreements, potentially reducing its liabilities.
In its latest 10-Q, the company reported that it has terminated its agreement with Board of Control for Cricket in India (“BCCI”), which called for the company to pay $3M per year for 10 years. The company still has a memorandum of understanding with DLF Indian Premier League (“IPL”), which was for $2M a year. However, it has assigned that IPL memorandum to Global Cricket Venture, of which a Live Current subsidiary owns 50.05%. It appears that Live Current may still be liable for some of the money owed to IPL, but there may be some technicalities that let it off the hook:
In conjunction with our execution of the Memoranda, we signed an agreement (the “Venture Agreement”) with Netlinkblue, the owner of the live streaming and mobile rights to the BCCI and IPL cricket matches. Under the Venture Agreement, we and Netlinkblue agreed to create a new company into which we would transfer our rights under the Memoranda and Netlinkblue would transfer the rights it acquired to live stream the matches. As contemplated by the Venture Agreement, a company was incorporated in Singapore on June 10, 2008 and named Global Cricket Venture Pte. Ltd. (“Global Cricket Venture”). Our wholly-owned subsidiary, LCM Cricket Ventures, currently owns 50.05% of the shares of Global Cricket Venture. Pursuant to the Venture Agreement, once we and Netlinkblue each transfer the rights we received from the BCCI and the IPL into Global Cricket Venture, certain rights and obligations will arise, including the obligation that each of us provides funding to Global Cricket Venture…To our knowledge, Netlinkblue has not transferred the rights it received from the BCCI and the IPL to Global Cricket Venture, therefore, as of March 31, 2009, we do not believe that we have an obligation to provide funding to Global Cricket Venture…
So if Live Current gets out of these deals and stops earning revenue from them, what’s left? Not much, but perhaps it could eventually return to profitability.
The 10-Q also confirms Domain Name Wire’s earlier story that it sold Vietnam.com for $400,000. The 10-k doesn’t directly say this, but says a domain was sold after Q1 ended for $400,000, and it was a geo domain name.
It seems you hear more than ever of companies trying to squirm out of their agreements. Bankruptcy used to be a last resort with some shame attached to it since a company were basically leaving their creditors hanging.
Now we know where the phrase “air tight contract” came from.