Media rights for Indian Premier League or IPL, the most lucrative and widely watched sports event in India, has been grabbed by Star India for a whooping Rs 16,347 crore.
This contract will now empower Star India to hold complete media rights for this mega event, starting from 2018 to 2022. Thus, Star India will pay Rs 54.5 crore for 300 IPL matches being played between this period.
This is certainly the highest and most expensive media contract ever given for IPL.
However, the shocker was Facebook’s daredevil bid for claiming digital media rights of the event – they bid Rs 3900 crore, and lost. But the amount of the bid clearly stunned everyone.
Uday Shankar, Star India CEO said, “We are delighted to bring IPL to the rightful home of cricket in India.”
Star India’s IPL Gamble: Rs 16,347 Crore For 5 years!
There were total of 13 bidders, but Star India won the complete contract because of their highest bid, covering all the 7 formats of the media coverage.
Star India’s consolidated bid was $2.5 billion or Rs 16,347 crore for the complete event.
However, in addition to the consolidated bid, they also bid separately for the 7 categories:
Rs 6,196.94 crore for Indian subcontinent rights
Rs 1,443 crore for the digital rights
Rs 242.54 crore collectively for five global rights, also called as rest of the world territories
Now, the addition of these separate bid is Rs 7,882.47 crore. Hence, Star India added a premium of Rs 8,465 crore on the consolidated bid, which made the total amount as Rs 16,347.5 crore, thereby becoming the largest bidder of consolidated rights.
As per the rules of the bidding, the consolidated bidding had to be higher than the sum of the highest bids for every category; and technically, by putting in the premium of Rs 7882.47 crore, Star India was able to achieve that.
The total amount of the highest bid for every category came to Rs 15,819.51, which is just Rs 528 crore less than what Star India eventually paid.
Sony Pictures Network (SPN), which held the rights since last 10 years had bid Rs 11,050 crore for only one category: Indian subcontinent.
In 2015, Vivo had bagged the IPL title sponsorship for two years for Rs 2190 crore; whereas Oppo has paid Rs 1070 crore for Indian team jersey.
Star India will now pay Rs 3269 crore every year to BCCI for IPL media rights, which means Rs 54.5 crore for every IPL match, between 2018 and 2022.
Star India is also the media rights holder for all matches played (excluding IPL), played by Indian team. This contract will end in March next year.
Facebook’s Digital Right Bid Stuns Everyone
Meanwhile, Facebook bid Rs 3900 crore or $600 million for grabbing digital media rights for IPL, which is the highest any company bid. In fact, Star India had only bid Rs 1443 crore for digital rights, which is three times less than what Facebook had bid.
Hotstar which had the digital streaming rights between 2015 and 2017 had paid only Rs 303 crore.
The amount which Facebook was ready to shell out, in order to get digital streaming rights speaks volume about their plans in India, and their laser-sharp focus on videos.
What else can be bigger than IPL rights, when it comes to online videos, and Facebook knows this fact. Very soon, they are going to launch their own exclusive shows, and will compete against the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, in terms of video content.
Facebook’s daredevil bid has certainly changed a lot of things for the online entertainment sector, and things will only improve from here.
