STAR India Pvt Ltd on Thursday won the BCCI global media rights (broadcasting and digital) by successfully bidding a colossal Rs 6,138.1 crore ($944 million, £672 million) for five years, 2018-23 in e-auction, in a three-way race. STAR India now effectively owns Indian cricket.
STAR India will get to broadcast at least 102 international matches (to be played on the Indian soil will 2023, and will pay Rs.60.18 crore per match (including Tests, One-day Internationals and T20 Internationals). In the previous rights cycle that ended last month, and which was also held by STAR India, the company was paying Rs.43.20 crore. That means, the BCCI will now receive Rs.16.98 crore per match more than what it was receiving in the four-year cycle (2014-28).
Advertisement
STAR had earlier, in September, won the global IPL media rights (broadcast and digital) by bidding Rs.16,347.50 crore for the period 2018-22. This means that on Indian cricket alone, STAR has promised Rs 22,485.60 crore till 2023. And this is not to count the $1.9 billion that STAR India, in a joint bid with STAR Middle East, had committed to the International Cricket Council’s media rights for the period 2015-23.
The other competitors in the race for the BCCI’s home media rights were Sony and Jio Reliance. Winner STAR India will now broadcast, both on television and digital platform. Interestingly, the matches, for the first time ever in BCCI’s history, will be telecast simultaneously on the digital platform, without any delay. Earlier, there used to a few minutes on the digital platform to maintain the exclusivity of television broadcast.
Advertisement
It was for the first time that the BCCI opted for e-auction instead of the traditional manual bidding. Interestingly, for the IPL media rights bidding the BCCI had opposed e-auction by filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court.
After winning the IPL rights auction, bid STAR India Chairman-cum-CEO Uday Shankar, now also its Asia head, was non-committal vis-à-vis BCCI media rights. When asked, Shankar had told Outlook in September: “We have IPL and the ICC rights, which is pretty good. Given the inflation in the rights universe there is so much only one can afford. If we don’t have the BCCI rights we are fine.”
Pressed further on whether he was thinking of bidding, come March 2018, Shankar had said: “That depends on what are the terms, what value etc. etc. it’s too early to say anything. But our strategy to participate in the IPL tender was also designed to create a buffer for us that in case we don’t have, or don’t win, the BCCI rights, we can still have a good business. The BCCI rights have some issues. There are a lot of Test matches and their viewership has fallen. Personally, I love Test cricket but commercially it doesn’t make great sense.”
