The Indian Premier League (IPL) currently ranks fourth behind the National Football League (NFL), English Premier League (EPL) and Major League Baseball (MLB) in terms of broadcast fees per match. However, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) expects the IPL to become the second most lucrative league in the world after the fresh media rights sale. BCCI Secretary Jay Shah has said that even if the media rights go to the base price, even then this biggest tournament of cricket will take a huge leap. The BCCI has fixed the base price for the auction at Rs 32,890 crore this time.
The e-auction for IPL Media Rights has started. E-commerce giant Amazon may have been out of the race for media rights (2023-2027), but big players like Disney+ Hotstar, Sony, Viacom18 are among the big names in the auction. Last time Star India bought the broadcast rights of IPL in India for the 2018 to 2022 cycle. Star India made the highest bid of Rs 16,347 crore.
BCCI secretary Jay Shah said in an interview to The Indian Express, “At present, a broadcaster has to pay $17 million for a match in the NFL. This is the highest for any sports league. After this comes the number of English Premier League, whose amount is $ 11 million. That’s roughly the figure for Major League Baseball.
Jay Shah further said, “In the last five-year cycle, we have got $9 million from an IPL match. This time, considering the minimum base price that we have fixed, BCCI will be paid $12 million (approximately Rs.94 crore) for each match. This is a big leap for Indian cricket on the global stage. We will be well behind the NFL.
Jay Shah said, “BCCI has opted for e-auction for ‘better price discovery’ and transparent process. There are 4 types of packages in e-auction. Package A contains the Indian subcontinent exclusive TV (broadcast) rights, while Package B includes the digital rights for the Indian subcontinent. Package C is for the digital rights for 18 select matches per season, while Package D will be for the combined rights for TV and digital for the overseas market (all matches).
Jay Shah said, ‘BCCI has introduced Package C, so that many players can be part of the auction. We need to expand the game and that will help. “The NFL has seven broadcasting partners, we’re only looking at three or four,” he said, citing the NFL.
Viacom18 JV (Giant Venture), Walt Disney (Star), Zee and Sony are the 4 contenders for the package. They have a strong hold on the TV and digital market. Some other contenders, mainly for digital rights, are Times Internet, FunAsia, Dream11, Fancode. At the same time, Sky Sports (UK) and SuperSport (South Africa) will be trying to get foreign TV and digital rights.
This time the amount of digital rights may even surpass that of the television bid. Jay Shah said, ‘By 2024, India will have 90 million internet users. That is why digital rights are very important for the development of cricket. So far 10 companies (TV and streaming) are in the race for IPL media rights.
This time there are 4 special packages for media rights. There will be an e-auction for 74 matches of each season for 2 days. There are also plans to increase the number of matches to 94 in 2026-27 with the IPL having 10 teams. In the midst of the havoc of the Corona epidemic, the BCCI had sold two new teams. BCCI earned $1.7 billion from this. The bid for the Lucknow franchise was over 250 times the base price.