All eyes were on the BCCI’s auction for the media rights for India, rest of the world along with the digital media rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL). In the bidding process, all the competitors fought in an intense battle and at the end, Star India won it beating the major competition Sony.
Sony Pictures were the owner of the rights earlier who had bought them for 10 years for a bid of INR 8200 crore. Star India earned that right for the next 5 years for almost double the amount for INR 16,347.50 crore. It was a historic deal in the game of cricket. IPL has grown in stature massively and hence such whopping numbers on the show.
Facebook, Amazon, Reliance Jio, Star India, Sony Pictures, Discovery, Twitter, Yahoo, Sky, British Telecom and ESPN Digital Media were interested to bid for the rights. Sony, Star India, Airtel, Reliance Jio, Times Internet, Facebook, Yupp TV, Supersort, Gulf DTH OSN, Econet, Perform media, Followon Interactive and BeIN Sports were interpreted as eligible for bidding.
There were some massive bidders for the digital media rights. Facebook (3,900 crores), Airtel (3280 crores), Jio (3,075.72 crores) were amongst the top bids. But the BCCI decided to hand over those rights as well to Star.
After winning the rights, Uday Shankar the CEO of Star, in a press conference, said, “I’d just like to convey my delight at being finally able to bring the IPL to what we believe is the rightful home for cricket in this country and elsewhere. We would also like to thank BCCI for choosing us as their appropriate partners. We compliment BCCI for running such an immaculately transparent process.”
“IPL is a very powerful property. We would remain very committed for the growth of sports in country and hope it would be driven by the power of cricket,” he added. “It was a conscious call to bid for global rights, we have presence on all forms, it made sense for us to win it for all the markets. Everyone picked up their strength and aspiration, and went for it,” Uday said.
