In a historic first, the sale earnings of the digital rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) have overshadowed the earnings from the TV rights.
The BCCI has sold the media rights of the next five-year cycle (2023-2027) of the Indian Premier League in an e-auction for a whopping Rs 48,390 crore (Rs 143.34 crore per match).
BCCI secretary Jay Shah made the announcement via social media on Tuesday evening, the third day of the e-auction.
While Disney Star retained their Indian sub-continent TV rights, the most sought-after India digital rights deal was acquired by the Reliance backed Viacom18, which also won the non-exclusive Package C.
Package D with a base price of Rs 3 crore per game with overseas TV and Digital Rights on offer was sold to Viacom18 and Times Internet.
The total earnings from IPL's digital rights (Package B and Package C) will now be Rs 23,775.16 crore (Rs 57.94 crore per match) while the revenue from the sale of the TV rights (Package A) is Rs 23,575 crore (Rs 57.5 crore per match). Package D will earn the BCCI Rs 1,058 crores (Rs 2.6 crore per match)
The Four packages:
Package A: Sole TV rights for the Indian subcontinent only - Star India.
Package B: Only Digital rights & exclusively for the Indian subcontinent - Viacom 18
Package C: Digital rights for a special bouquet of matches, including the playoffs, for the Indian subcontinent only - Viacom 18
Package D: Rights for the Rest of the World for both TV and digital, is divided into two sub-categories: Combined ROW or five individual regions - Viacom 18 and Times Internet
Viacom18 entered the fray through a consortium which has former Star India head Uday Shankar (Bodhi Tree) and James Murdoch (Lupa Systems) in it.
The new deal also ends the monopoly of a single broadcaster. Sony had acquired the rights by paying Rs 8200 crore for the first 10 years (2008-17) while Star with a bid price of 16347.50 won it for the next five years. This is the first time the IPL will have 3 broadcasters.
The auction started at 1100 hrs on June 12 with Package A and B rolled out up front. The bidding commenced from the base price of Rs 49 crore for the TV rights and Rs 33 crore for the digital rights and the parties had up to 30 minutes between the bids. The bidders quoted a figure on a per-match basis, with the minimum bid increment (MBI) value being fixed at Rs 50 lakh.
Looking Back at the Previous Years
It is interesting that when the IPL was introduced in 2008, digital rights of the league weren't even sold. It was only in 2015 that Star India won the 'internet and mobile rights' of the league for Rs 302.2 crore.
In the previous IPL media rights auction (for the 2008-2022 cycle), the highest bid for the digital rights category was made by Facebook for a sum of Rs 3,900 crore.
However, Star India bagged the complete digital and TV media rights with a consolidated bid of Rs 16,347.5 crore.
Digital Makes a Splash
BCCI Treasurer Arun Dhumal had tweeted earlier in the day to say that the sale of the digital rights had been more lucrative than TV.
"So digital turned out to be bigger than linear TV this season in IPL Media Rights. I would like to thank all the participants for their interest in the best “Made in India” sports property," he wrote in the tweet.
Speaking about Star's focus on television rights, Rebecca Campbell said in a statement, "We made disciplined bids with a focus on long-term value. We chose not to proceed with the digital rights given the price required to secure that package.
"We will be exploring other multiplatform cricket rights, including future rights for ICC and BCCI, which we currently hold through the 2023 and 2024 seasons respectively."
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