Bilateral cricket media rights: Will BCCI make a killing again?

livemint.com:

₹48,390 crore in IPL (Indian Premier League) rights for the 2023-27 cycle. That included ₹23,575 crore from Disney Star (TV rights) and ₹23,757 crore from Viacom18 (exclusive digital rights). Later, when the ICC (International Cricket Council) auctioned its rights for four years, Disney Star was in the thick of action again, picking up the rights for $3.03 billion.

Thereafter, it decided to retain only the digital rights and sub-licensed the TV rights to Zee Entertainment Enterprises for around $1.4 billion. This time, up for grabs are two packages — TV rights for the Indian subcontinent with a base price of ₹20 crore per match; and digital and the rest of the world rights with a base price of ₹25 crore per match. Under the current FTP (future tour programme), India will play 88 games in the next five years, including 25 Tests, 27 ODIs, and 36 T20Is.

And while the board, for the first time, has kept the reserve price at 25% lower than the average per-match price from the last cycle ( ₹60 crore per match), it is counting on the popularity of Indian cricket and the fact that the bidders fought tooth and nail for the rights of the IPL and ICC tournaments. Even at the last cycle’s average price, the board will secure ₹5,280 crore for the next five years from India cricket. Its internal target, however, is ₹100 crore per match or ₹8,800 crore.

That, sports marketing experts feel, could be a pipe dream considering that most of these companies are now looking hard at returns on the huge monies spent for the IPL and ICC rights. In the current scenario, Viacom18, which has the digital rights of the IPL, will be looking at digital rights of the India matches, too. SPNI, which is merging with ZEE, will have the TV rights of the