Comments
Reliance Jio Digital, Amazon Seller Service, Airtel, Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo are among 24 players interested in bidding for the media rights of the Indian Premier League.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India will conduct the auction on Monday. The sport’s administrator will hold the bidding for two major categories — broadcast and digital (internet and mobile) rights. Going by the number of entities that bought the tender document, digital media platforms seem to outnumber traditional broadcasters such as Star India and Sony Pictures Network.
Currently, Sony holds the broadcast rights of the IPL after it paid ₹8,200 crore for a 10-year deal in 2008. Star India owns the digital rights of IPL. The BCCI had said that the digital rights for the last three years had fetched just over ₹300 crore.
The new rights will be for a period of five years beginning 2018.
Industry observers say that a slew of digital players joining the bidding process points to the growing importance of online as a category.
“Viewers want anytime-anywhere convenience of watching. With data packages getting cheaper, this viewership is going to grow in the coming years and live events are a sure bet,” say digital broadcasters.
According to media watchers, BCCI could make a windfall gain of ₹13,000₹15,000 crore.
According to Duff & Phelps, a premier global valuation and corporate finance advisor, the IPL’s overall worthhas increased to $5.3 billion, from $4.2 billion last year.
Duff & Phelps, which brought out a report titled IPL: The Decade Edition: A Concise Report on Brand Values in the Indian Premier League , had said that the auction will be keenly watched. “The BCCI is clearly set for a huge windfall. We could be looking at a television broadcasting deal of record proportions. This deal may follow the precedent set by some of the big-ticket broadcasting deals across the world,” Santosh N, MD, Valuation Advisory Services, Duff & Phelps, said in a statement.
The auction was to have been on August 28, but was deferred as a case related to e-auction was pending in the Supreme Court.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.