Indian Premier League

Move over Sony: Star India wins IPL media rights for next five years at Rs 16347.50 cr

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Picture Courtesy : IPLT20.com

In  a landmark and whopping deal Star India  has bagged the IPL media rights for TV and digital broadcast worth Rs 16,347.50 crore with a single consolidated bid worldwide. It pipped  arch- rival Sony to acquire the rights from 2018 to 2022.

According to Times of India report, a total of 24 companies had picked up the Invitation To Tender (ITT) to bid for the broadcast and digital rights in the Indian subcontinent and global markets for the next five years. However, only 14 of the 24 names turned up with their respective bids, which meant that there was no participation by the likes of Yahoo, Amazon and ESPN digital.

After a long technical evaluation, it was announced by BCCI CEO Rahul Johri that for broadcast rights, Star and Sony had emerged as eligible candidates while Times Internet, Reliance Jio, Airtel and Facebook could rightfully bid for digital acquisition. However, it was later revealed that Star had launched a consolidated bid and was declared winner.

Interestingly, rival Sony’s individual bid for broadcast (TV rights) this time was Rs 11,050 crore compared to Star’s Rs 6,196 crore. But as per rule, the companies could form a consortium and if its consolidated global bid happened to be greater than the sum total parts of every individual bid they stand to win the rights.

“We believe the IPL is a very powerful property, and we believe there is lots more value that can be created for fans of cricket on digital and TV,” Uday Shankar, chairman of Star India, said. “We would remain committed to ensure the growth of sports in this country continues to be driven by the power of cricket.”

In 2008, with a bid of 8200 crore, Sony Pictures Network had won the IPL media rights for a duration of 10 years. The global digital rights of IPL was handed over to Novi Digital (three years) in 2015 for 302.2 crore.

Following the 24 bid documents being bought, 14 bidding companies have showed interest in taking up the process further with Amazon, Taj TV, Gulf DTH, Group M, Media India, Sky UK Ltd, ESPN Digital Media, BTG Legal Services, BTPLC , Twitter and Discovery backing out.

Former IPL founder and commissioner Lalit Modi too tweeted his reaction on the IPL media rights in a series of tweets.

The IPL media rights have been divided into seven different categories — Indian television rights, Indian digital rights, the US, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and rest of the world.

Sony held the TV rights for the event since 2008 when it bid Rs 8,200 crore for a period of ten years with the league starting off at that stage. A year later, and after a resounding success, Sony and BCCI renegotiate the figure and it rose to $1.63 billion.

In 2012, Star Group paid Rs. 3,851 crore for rights to telecast the matches played on Indian soil. This deal ran from 2012-2018. As far as title sponsorship is concerned, Chinese handset maker Vivo had bid a whopping Rs 2,199 crore in June. A massive rise in comparison to Rs 50 crore per year price that DLF had paid for the first five seasons.

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