DisneyStar, Reliance Among The Top Bidders At The IPL Media Rights; Google, Amazon & Airtel Likely To Miss The Boat

The Indian Premier League (IPL) now has six bidders that are competing for the rights to stream the cricket matches for the next five years (2023-27). The e-auction of the media rights will take place on June 12. 

According to an ET report, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has received bets from DisneyStar, Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN), Zee Entertainment Enterprises, Reliance’s Viacom18, Times Internet and FunAsia.

It is the first time that the BCCI is separately auctioning IPL’s broadcast and streaming rights.

Ecommerce giant Amazon, tech colossal Alphabet, telecom giant Airtel and fantasy sports platform Dream 11 are not competing for the media rights. Although, the four companies had initially picked up the tender document.

It has been reported that the above-cited companies are not bidding for IPL’s media rights after BCCI introduced a nonexclusive package. ET report quoted sources saying that the BCCI kept a very high reserve price and on top of it, the digital rights are not exclusive. This has irked a few players.

It was reported that there are only four bidders for the first three packages – India TV (package A), India digital (package B) and non-exclusive, India digital (package C). On the other hand, two bidders – Times Internet and FunAsia are bidding for the world package (package D).

The six bidders are not permitted to submit a composite bid for all media rights. In order to get streaming rights for all packages, the winner of the first package (India TV) has to challenge the winning bidder of the second package (India digital) for the media rights, and then the final winner of the second package can contest with the winner of the third package.

The base price of these packages has been computed on the basis of 74 matches. The BCCI has informed all bidders that there will be around 410 matches in the next five years. At the reserved price, the board will earn nearly INR 36K Cr. 

In the previous bidding that took place in 2017, Disney Star ( which was earlier known as Star India) won the media rights for INR 16,348 Cr. However, this time the winning bid is expected to go as high as INR 600 Bn ($7.7 Bn).

Earlier this year, 29 Indian startups sponsored 10 IPL teams while Indian conglomerate Tata got the title sponsorship for the IPL 2022. Out of 29 startups, there were 10 unicorn startups, 12 growth-stage startups, five late-stage startups and two listed startups.

The participation of homegrown startups in the IPL 2022 is indicative of startups’ growing interest in the Indian sports industry. 

Prior to this, edtech unicorn BYJU’S also became the official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 that will happen at the end of this year. By becoming the official sponsor, the edtech startup would leverage its right to this year’s FIFA World Cup marks, emblem and assets.