Bilateral Cricket Media Rights Auction Today, BCCI set for another windfall

8 months ago 248

Bilateral Cricket Media Rights Auction Today, BCCI set for another windfall. The Sony, Viacom18, and Disney Star are main contenders.

The BCCI media rights for bilateral cricket matches to be played in India over the course of the following five years will be put up for auction on Thursday, August 31, by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

The three bidders, Disney Star, Viacom18, and Sony Pictures Networks India (SPNI), are hoped to once again relax their financial restraints.

When they did it previously, BCCI walked away with the IPL (Indian Premier League) rights for the cycle 2023–27, valued at 48,390 crore. Included in that were payments of Rs. 23,575 crore (for TV rights) from Disney Star and Rs. 23,757 crore (for exclusive digital rights) from Viacom18.

Disney Star was once more in the thick of things when the ICC (International Cricket Council) later auctioned off its rights for four years, purchasing the rights for $3.03 billion.

After that, it made the decision to keep solely the digital rights and sublicensed the TV rights for almost $1.4 billion to Zed Entertainment Enterprises.

Bilateral Cricket Media Rights of BCCI

This time, there are two packages up for grabs: the TV rights for the Indian subcontinent, which start at a base price of 20 crore each match, and the internet and international rights, which start at a base price of 25 crore per match.

India will play 88 matches over the course of the next five years under the current FTP (future tour programme), featuring 25 Tests, 27 ODIs, and 36 T20Is.

The board is also banking on the popularity of Indian cricket and the fact that the bidders fought valiantly for the rights to the IPL and ICC tournaments despite keeping the reserve price for the first time at 25% less than the average per-match price from the previous cycle (60 crore per match).

The board will receive 5,280 crore from India cricket over the following five years, even at the average price from the previous cycle. However, its internal goal is 100 crore every match, or 8,800 crore.

Currently, Viacom18, the owner of the IPL’s digital rights, will also be considering the digital rights for matches involving India. The ICC’s TV rights will be held by SPNI, which is merging with ZED, and it has managed to keep its sports company free of any Indian cricket since 2018.

Disney Star, which had held the rights to all three key properties (BCCI matches, IPL matches, and ICC matches), currently only possesses TV rights to the IPL and digital rights to the ICC competitions.

Experts predict that there won’t be aggressive bidding for the BCCI rights if the bidders act on business logic rather than ego.

However, Viacom18, which is expected to bid strongly for digital rights, cannot allow the bidding for TV to be so low that its competitors may purchase those for closer to the base price.