Media rights auction for the world’s richest cricket league – the Indian Premier League, which has media giants such as Disney and Sony Corp vying for broadcast rights, could fetch India’s cricket board upwards of $6 billion , the third day has ended, a BCCI official said on Monday. The online auction for television and digital broadcast rights from 2023 to 2027 for the IPL, the two-month-old popular cricket league that enjoys top television ratings, began on Sunday morning and continued throughout the day on Monday.
The auction was likely to end on Tuesday, the official who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media on the subject, told Reuters.
The high-stakes bidding war has Viacom18, Reliance Industries’ broadcasting joint venture, Sony Corp’s India unit and Disney, which currently owns the television and digital rights, all fighting for a piece of the cricketing pie.
The current digital and television rights are held by Star India, now owned by The Walt Disney Company, which paid 163.48 billion ($2.09 billion) in 2017.
Meanwhile, according to sources in the ongoing e-auction, the IPL media rights value for the 2023-2027 cycle has been sold on Monday for Rs 44,075 crore for 410 matches. As per the latest information with ANI, Package A of TV is sold for Rs 23,575 crore which is Rs 57.5 crore per match and Package B of Digital Rights for India is sold for Rs 20,500 crore or Rs 50 crore per match. Whose bid is yet to come but the TV and digital rights value per match is Rs 107.5 crore.
According to ANI sources, two media houses have won the bid, one for TV and the other for digital. The media rights value has increased by more than two and a half times as compared to what Star India paid in 2017.