STAR India’s media rights: An IPL T20 tie will get BCCI 12 crore more than a ODI

STAR India on Monday hit all other bidders in the fray for a six with just one single mind-boggling global bid of Rs 16,347.50 crore to acquire the broadcast and digital rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the next five years.

The fact that BCCI earlier got Rs 8200 crore from Sony for a 10 year term (2008 to 2017) shows the quantum jump in value of IPL as a product.

READ | STAR India wins BCCI’s IPL global media rights with record 16,347.5 crore bid

With this deal, it is clear that IPL is the hottest property in Indian cricket. The BCCI will approximately fetch Rs 55 crore per IPL game whereas an international match brings about Rs 43 crore.

In 2012, STAR won broadcast and digital rights of India matches between 2012-2018 for Rs 3851 crore, a figure broken down to Rs 43 crore per match.

Going by the whopping response for the IPL media rights, the BCCI would be licking their lips when the television rights for international matches will be up for grab next year in March.

READ | IPL media rights auction highlights: STAR India sweeps all rights with world-record bid of Rs 16,347.5 crore

ULTIMATE CRICKETING DESTINATION

With IPL’s acquisition, STAR India, who also own the India and ICC cricket rights, have become the ultimate destination for cricketing action in the country.

If Team India has adopted a ruthless way of winning of late, STAR India adopted the same strategy off the field when the much-anticipated media rights for world’s most lucrative T20 leagues were unveiled.

Out of the 24 companies who bought the bid document, only 14 companies entered the bidding process with big names like Amazon, Twitter and Discovery staying away. Thirteen bids were found to be eligible after technical evaluation with BamTech disqualified.

READ | STAR India CEO says it was all-or-nothing for them at IPL media rights auction

The battle was clearly between Sony Pictures Network and Star India. As expected Sony went all out to retain the India subcontinent TV rights with a bid of Rs 11,050 crore, while STAR placed only Rs 6,196 crore for the same category.

SONY, STAR STRATEGIES

From the looks of it, STAR India had prepared well to guard against all scenarios. It was ready to take singles and was also ready to go for the big shots if the situation demanded.

It not just banked heavily on the Indian subcontinent TV and digital rights, but also placed bids for USA, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the rest of the world categories. Placing a global bid was the winning shot that clinched the deal for STAR.

Had there been no global bid in place, STAR would have had to stay satisfied with just one territory rights. Star India’s consolidated bid was just Rs 500 crore more than the consolidated individual bid.

As per the bidding rules, if the global bid received (Rs 16,347.50 crore) is greater than the sum total parts of every individual bid (Rs 15,819.51 crore), it stands to win the rights.

On the other hand, Sony placed a bid in one territory other than the Indian subcontinent TV rights. Another factor that could have worked in STAR’s favour was other players refraining from bidding in rest of the categories.

“India, cricket and IPL have changed dramatically since its inception (in 2008) and this bid is a reflection of that,” STAR CEO Uday Shankar said.

“Even if it was slightly less, we would not have got the rights. In every category, it was so competitive,” Shankar added.

DIGITAL GAINS

One expected the digital rights to give an insight on the rising trend and the numbers were not disappointing. Companies like Facebook, Airtel and Jio breached the 3000-crore mark with the social media giant placing Rs 3900 crore bid for the India digital rights of the IPL.

The whopping IPL media rights is another shot in the arm for the troubled Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) after managing to get Rs 1079 crore for Team India sponsorship rights and Rs 2199 crore IPL title sponsorship rights.