Sky TV is threatening to take Fairfax Media and NZME to court over coverage of the Rio Olympics despite neither media outlet sending reporters to the Games.

The pay-TV company, which paid the International Olympic Committee millions of dollars for the rights to cover the Games, sent Fairfax (publisher of Stuff) a legal letter on Friday afternoon.

It outlined allegations of intended copyright breaches and said a court injunction will be sought unless Fairfax signs an agreement by Monday to abide by the media accreditation terms - which it has already refused to accept - limiting its rights to fairly use other parties' video under the Copyright Act.

It is understood that NZME received a similar letter and both companies are believed to be consulting lawyers.

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"We respect Sky has paid a significant sum for the broadcasting rights and all we want is an assurance that we don't have to sign away our rights under New Zealand law to cover an event of major significance," Fairfax executive editor Sinead Boucher said on Friday.

Last week, Fairfax and NZME independently decided not to send reporting teams to Rio, as a condition of media accreditation was to agree to Sky TV conditions they said restricted coverage.

Initially, New Zealand journalists would have had to agree not to criticise Sky TV commentators, under Olympic Games rules the pay-TV company wanted to impose on its news media rivals.

Sky backed off that demand after protests from its competitors, but never backed down to the point where its demands recognised media rights under New Zealand copyright law.

"In our view, it is unacceptable that a broadcast rights holder should have been given so much power to control how its competitor media organisations get to report on an event of such national and international significance," Boucher said then.

"I would also like to express my deep disappointment that the NZ Olympic committee (NZOC) has effectively washed its hands of any part in this, despite being a joint party to the NARS, but has instead given full responsibility for deciding the terms of accreditation to Sky."

Sky was able to flex its muscles, as the NZOC had allocated it the New Zealand broadcasting rights, and helped it write the rules that resulted in the standoff.

Earlier on Friday, TVNZ chief executive Kevin Kenrick took a swing at Sky accusing it of impeding news coverage.

"The Rio news access rules [are a] demonstration of Sky leveraging its market dominance to impede the ability of New Zealand's news media to report on Olympic sporting events in a timely manner," Kenrick said.

Kenrick recognised that Sky had paid significant license fees to acquire exclusive rights to the Olympics games.

"It's one thing to restrict full coverage of live events to those who pay, but we think it's quite another step to prevent New Zealanders from accessing sports news in a timely manner unless they're prepared to pay for a premium subscription," he said.