The first day of the auction for the TV and digital rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) saw huge bidding, averaging over Rs 100 crore for each match. The bidding process will continue on Monday. On the first day, the bid for TV rights reached Rs 57 crore per match and digital rights reached Rs 48 crore per match. Overall, the value of media rights per match for the IPL 2023-2027 period has reached Rs 105 crore. A total of 43,050 bids have been placed on the first day, which is Rs 10,160 crore more than the BCCI’s base price of Rs 32,890 crore.
Earlier, BCCI secretary Jay Shah had claimed in an interview to The Indian Express that the English Premier League (EPL) would become the world’s No. 2 sports league in terms of media rights per match. He said, “Currently the media rights cost for a match in the National Football League (NFL) is approximately $17 million, the highest for a league of any sport. It is followed by the English Premier League and Major League Baseball at $11 million. In the last five years, we got nine million dollars for an IPL match. This time, considering the fixed base price, the BCCI is set to get a payment of $ 12 million (about Rs 94 crore) per IPL match.
The final decision regarding the auction of IPL media rights is difficult to come on Monday. Its decision may come by Tuesday. In such a situation, it remains to be seen whether the world’s most popular cricket league will leave behind the NFL in terms of earning from media rights? The e-auction started at 11 am on Sunday with Package A (Indian TV Rights) and Package B (Indian Digital Rights). When the day came to an end at six o’clock in the evening, the bidding was not over for both of them.
A BCCI official told The Indian Express, “We are happy with the way the day has progressed and the best part is that all the bidders have shown keen interest. We are hoping that the bids reach the figure that IPL deserves. The second day will be more interesting for all the stakeholders.”
The auction of both the packages will resume at 11 am on Monday. Once the bidding for these ends, there will be bidding for Package C (18 non-exclusive digital rights) and Package D (world rights for TV and digital). The BCCI expects the combined value to be over Rs 45,000 crore for the five years.
In 2017, when Star India acquired the media rights for the 2018-2022 period through a total bid of Rs 16,347.5 crore, the company had promised to pay Rs 54.5 crore per match. This time the bidding is being done on a per match basis and the base price per match for Package A and Package B has been fixed at Rs 49 crore and Rs 33 crore respectively.
The jump in digital rights value is staggering and is in line with the expectations of most cricket boards. Five years ago, Facebook was the highest digital rights bidder with Rs 3,900 crore based on composite bids. He used to pay around Rs 13 crore per match. This year BCCI eliminated composite bids in view of the rapidly growing popularity of digital.