Kolkata: The war for bagging the global broadcasting and digital media rights of the Indian Premier League was won by Star India courtesy their huge bid of ₹16347.5 crore at the auctions held in Mumbai on Monday.
Star India’s bid was way much higher than the combined bid of the others which amounted to ₹15,819.54 and thus as result, they are now the eligible holders of the media rights for the next five seasons of the IPL starting from the eleventh edition onwards.
The huge amount of money involved in the auctions on Monday only goes on to describe the extent of the growth of the IPL as only the TV rights of the popular T20 tournament was bought by Sony for just ₹8200 crore in 2008, the year it all began.
The BCCI now, would earn nearly double the amount in just five years as they are set to receive an amount of ₹3270 crore per year from the media rights of the IPL.
What’s ironical is the fact that they would now earn more from an IPL match (₹55 crore) as compared to an international match played by India (₹43 crore).
The bids submitted by Sony and Star India, after their evaluation were found eligible for the TV rights while Airtel, Reliance Jio, Times Internet and Facebook were found eligible for acquiring the digital rights.
The broadcast rights of the IPL was held by Sony after it had acquired a deal in 2008 paying a sum of ₹8200 crore. Star India held the digital rights ahead of this auction for the media rights on Monday.
With the various media rights available for sale, 24 companies had picked up the papers for being a part of this auction but surprisingly only 14 of them were present at the auction.
The ones who did not submit their bids are Amazon , Taj TV , Gulf DTH, Group M, Media India, Sky UK Ltd, ESPN Digital Media, BTG Legal Services, BTPLC , Twitter, Discovery.
This auction was supposed to be held on an open tender process last year in September where a total of 18 companies were in the reckoning but as the result of the intervention by the Supreme Court, the entire bidding process was postponed.
The several media rights include broadcast (TV) and digital (mobile and internet) for segments in India, Africa, Middle East, Africa, Europe and America. Star India’s digital platform HotStar would stream the IPL matches live in India, expectedly.
“Our main endeavour to the stakeholders was to provide a transparent process where there should not be any iota of doubt,” said BCCI CEO Rahul Johri.