Mumbai, Sep. 4 (Agencies): Star India will pay a staggering Rs 16,348 crore for the television and digital rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket for the next five years, the BCCI announced on Monday.
Sony, the only other bidder for the television rights of the world's richest domestic Twenty20 competition, offered Rs 11,050 crore but lost out to Star's consolidated offer for the worldwide rights from 2018 to 2022.
Bidders for digital rights included Supersport, Facebook, Airtel, Bamtech and Jio. Of the 24 companies that bought the tender document, 14 made bids.
”We believe the IPL is a very powerful property, and we believe there is lots more value that can be created for fans of cricket on digital and TV,” Star India chief executive Uday Shankar told reporters.
”India, cricket and IPL have changed dramatically since 2008, and this bid is a reflection of that,” he said of the mammoth bid.
The testimony to IPL's growth as the premier sporting property of the country is reflected by the fact that the previous 10-year bid for TV rights only was bought by Sony at Rs 8200 crore in 2008.
Now, the BCCI stands to earn nearly double that amount in half the duration (five years) with earnings of Rs 3270 crore from IPL media rights per year.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India will now earn Rs 55 crore approximately from an IPL match compared to Rs 43 crore, ironically, for each international match that India play.
The bid also reflects the world's second most populous nation's obsession with cricket, especially the 20-over format, despite a spot-fixing scandal in 2013 which led to the ban of several players and two-year suspensions of two IPL teams.
The franchise-based competition began in 2008 with eight teams with owners including India's richest man Mukesh Ambani and Bollywood actors.
Rupert Murdoch's Star group also owns broadcast rights for 18 ICC global events to be held during an eight-year cycle from 2015 and India's international matches at home.
Rival Sony's individual bid for broadcast (TV rights) this time was Rs 11,050 crore compared to Star's Rs 6,196 crore.
However, according to the rules, the companies could form a consortium and if its consolidated global bid happened to be greater than the sum total parts of every individual bid they stand to win the rights.
Accordingly, the sum total of other bids, excluding Star consortium, was Rs 15,819.51 crore which is at least Rs 500 crore less than Star India's consolidated bid.
It is expected that Star India's digital vertical HotStar would be used for live streaming of IPL matches in India.
