A bid of drama and  a lot of suspense

CHENNAI : SIX months after striking what was the biggest ever television deal in cricket, the BCCI is keeping its fingers crossed ahead of the international and domestic telecast rights, that will be up for grabs via online auction, the first of its kind in the sport. Though six companies — Star India, Sony Pictures Network (SPN), Reliance Jio, Facebook, Google and Yupp TV — have bought the bid document, there are concerns that the deal might not fetch record numbers thanks to the ICC’s Future Tours Programme (FTP), which will come into effect mid 2019.

Though many BCCI officials are unhappy with e-auction as it will allow the players in fray to monitor how much the other competitors are bidding, one of the officials who formulated this concept revealed it would help the interested parties not to quote a huge amount and bid according to the market value. “In a closed-bid, nobody will know how much the other is going to go for and hence, we have seen huge money being pu­mped in. We saw it with the sp­o­ns­o­rship and IPL television rights, where the amount quoted by the winner was lot more than what the rest did,” he told Express. 

This means desperate parties won’t throw everything, which me­­ans, this move could in a way help SPN, who after losing the IPL, are keen to bag the international and domestic rights. “This is goi­ng to be at the most a two-horse race between Star and Sony. So in such a case, I don’t th­ink what kind of an effect e-auction will have because there are on­ly three categories. In fact, the bi­dders are only going to be more ca­utious as they don’t need to qu­o­te substantial amounts straight up. They can see how the competitor is bidding and do their math accordingly,” said one of the bidders. 

However, the presence of global players Facebook and Google is bound to see stiff competition on the digital front as starting from this cycle (April 2018-2023), there won’t be any delay in the relay of live-feed. This means, even if the television rights and digital rights exist with two different parties, the feed will run simultaneously, giving the digital broadcaster an edge over television. “The per ma­tch value (PMV) for television (`40 cr­­ore) and digital (`7 crore) has a vast difference. Facebook and Go­ogle showed during the IPL, how much they were interested in picking up the digital rights. And if one of them manage to get it, they are going to eat up the broadcaster’s potential revenue through ads. Until the same company buys both the rights, this will hand the digital rights holder a big advantage,” the bidder pointed out.

But, what could go against the BCCI is the FTP, which includes 102 matches in all. Though it is a significant number, there are only two marquee series (four Tests against Australia  in 2023 and five vs England (2021). But the biggest concern for the bidders is the nature of the teams that will visit India in this period — Bangladesh (one full Tour), Zimbabwe (two tours, including their first since 2002) and West Indies (who will come here thrice). “With the new FTP there is bound to be few series which won’t generate interest. The BCCI seems to have reduced the PMV keeping this in mind, but either way, this bid may not fetch head-turning numbers for television rights,” the bidder added.