It is the richest body in world cricket, but the BCCI stands to get a lot richer on Tuesday: Maybe by another ₹4,000 crore.
When the Board of Control for Cricket in India auctions five-year media rights for bilateral cricket played in India, in the bidding line-up will be web giants Facebook and Google, telecom company Reliance Jio, entertainment major Sony Pictures, and OTT players Hotstar and Yupp TV.
This will be the BCCI’s first-ever e-auction.
Industry sources say the Board stands to gain ₹4,000 crore through the sale of media rights from April 2018 to March 2023.
Last year, Star India had won the global media rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) for five years beginning 2018. The media company bid ₹16,347.50 crore, beating 14 contenders, including Sony Pictures, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter. Facebook had placed a whopping bid of ₹3,900 crore ($600 million) for exclusive digital rights of IPL but lost to Star which acquired the rights with a consolidated bid.
The BCCI has set a base price, or per match value of ₹33 crore for ‘Global Television Rights’ plus ‘Rest of the World Digital Rights Package’; ₹7 crore for the Indian Subcontinent Digital Rights Package, and ₹40 crore for the Global Consolidated Rights Package.
The BCCI has listed a total of 102 matches that will form part of the ICC’s Future Tours Programme from June 2018 to March 2023. During this period India will host 22 Tests, 45 ODIs and 35 T20s against nine opponents.
The deadline for the e-auction was extended by a week — the original date was March 27 — as the bidders had a number of queries regarding the process. Until now, the bids were through a closed-door process. However, the court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA), which runs the BCCI, felt that online bidding would be far more transparent.