The Indian Premier League is still 10 months away but the fight to gain ownership over media rights of the IPL has already started. The group that will own the right to telecast IPL will get it for the next five seasons 2024-27.
The auction for the media rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) started in Mumbai on Sunday, where big players like Disney Star, Sony Picture Networks India, Zee, and Viacom18 participated to gain the media rights for broadcasting IPL for the next five years in India.
For digital rights, it was Zee who competed against Disney + Hotstar and Reliance Jio. It was Star Sports who had picked up the composite rights for a huge sum of Rs 16,347 crore five years back.
The speculations in the market have already started about how much money the Board Of Cricket Control India (BCCI) may earn this time.
On March 29th, the BCCI declared the opening up of invitations to fight for the media rights cycle, which is further divided into four categories. The overall base price for the entire process is estimated at RS 32,890 crore.
The entire phase of bidding which started today is divided into two parts, where the bidding for Tv and digital rights took place today and the remaining rights which include non-exclusive digital rights and global rights will take place tomorrow.
At the end of day one with a spending of Rs 43,000 crore, IPL media rights value has increased over 2.5 times. It is estimated that TV rights per match touched Rs 54 crore and there is a chance it may go up to 55 crores tomorrow.
Digital rights stand at Rs 50 crore per match. The bidding for TV and digital rights didn’t end today, as the deadline to end the bidding process for the day was at 6 pm.
When the day started, the bidding for both TV and digital rights were not much impressive, but in the post-lunch session digital rights saw aggressive bidding, while TV bids continued to be unimpressive.
It was only in the last one-and-a-half hours when TV bids came into the picture, with almost a 3 crores rise per match.
The BCCI will do the auction for the remaining two packages tomorrow, which are known as non-exclusive India digital rights that come under the C package, and the rest of the world which comes under the D package.
What happened last time in the bidding process?:
The last time when IPL media rights bidding happened, it was Star Sports, who had paid an amount of NR,16,347.5 crores, with a combination base price of Rs 32890 crore, and got the right to telecast IPL on both TV and digital platforms for five seasons 2018-2022.
Base price for each package:
Package A ( Television) : Rs 49 crore / match
Package B (Digital Rights) : Rs 33 crore/ match
Package C ( Non-exclusive India digital rights): Rs 11 crore/ match
Package D ( Rest of the World rights) : crore/match
How is this auction different from last time:
There are two major differences from what happened last time in 2017. The first is that the composite bids were applicable last time. Had this been not applicable in 2017, it would have been Sony who would have walked away with the TV bid and Facebook would take the digital rights.
It was a composite bid for which the star managed to get the right for telecasting IPL.
The second reason is the introduction of the third pool, which gave a green signal to a streaming platform to obtain the non-exclusive rights for 18 games every season.
With the chance to telecast the opener and playoff in this pool, this is a healthy offer for the multiple platforms eyeing the cricket pie and is going to fetch the BCCI top dollar
