Arun Singh Dhumal, BCCI treasurer, is optimistic that the IPL’s media rights value for the 2023-2027 cycle will portray the league’s growth, which is currently a 10-team affair.
“IPL is the hottest property in cricket and it has just been expanded to a 10-team tournament, which means there will be more matches,” Dhumal said, as quoted by Reuters. “All of it should reflect in the value of the new media rights, which we expect to be significantly higher than our previous deal.”
Sports 18, a joint venture between Reliance and Viacom, would aggressively pursue media rights, placing pressure on Star India, Sony, and Zee.
“Viacom 18 will probably be the most aggressive of the three main players, because this builds into their long-term plans, including upping valuation for a possible Jio IPO in the future,” an industry insider told the Reuters news agecny.
The introduction of the Indian Premier League has altered the game for the BCCI, which derives the majority of its revenue from the sale of IPL television rights.
According to a study conducted by Elara Securities Research in 2021, cricket’s contribution to global broadcast rights is only 3%, but that doesn’t stop the IPL from being the fourth most valuable global league, trailing only the Big Three of American sports, the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and National Basketball Association (NBA) (NBA). In 2021, the IPL’s brand value was USD 6.3 billion, surpassing the Premier League in the United Kingdom.
Approximately 400 million people watched the IPL on television during the 2021 season, with another 260 million watching it online. However, with internet availability spreading at an unprecedented rate in India, digital numbers are expected to rise in the coming years.
Will the winning bid for Package B — digital rights for the Indian subcontinent — be higher than the winning bid for Package A — Indian subcontinent TV broadcast rights?
Keep in mind that the base price for Package A is Rs 49 crore each match, while the base price for digital rights is Rs 33 crore every match.
At the e-auction, incremental bids will be put until the auction procedure is completed. Notably, the bids will be presented on a screen without revealing the bidder’s name, along with the money for each package on a per match basis.
More crucially, the winner of Package A can compete for Package B with the highest bidder, offering to match the latter’s bid. The winner of Package A will be given the opportunity to put a bid that is 5% higher than the highest bid for Package B, and a new bidding process will begin from there. The winner of Package B, for example, can match the highest bid for Package C, and so on.
The IPL media rights might fetch the BCCI up to USD 10 billion, according to Lalit Modi, who played a significant role in launching the IPL in 2008.
“The explosion in the digital space, which we first explored briefly back in 2010, is now a reality. Every life is dictated by the mobile phone and IPL will be no different. Linear TV is still very much the lifeline for an Indian audience. So that is going nowhere. Now add the digital boom and the strength of Linear TV, and we have close to 10 billion dollars,” Modi wrote in his blog.
After the whole bidding process, which includes bundles C and D, the winners of the IPL Media Rights will be announced on June 13th. IPL media rights are estimated to have cost more than 40,000 crore thus far.
Finally, bids for both Package A and B of the IPL media rights auction have risen to 42,000 crores. On June 12, news agency ANI reported that bidding per match in India had topped 100 crores for TV and digital.
