Star India bags BCCI media rights for Rs 6,138.1 crore

After three days of intense bidding, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Wednesday awarded media rights for all bilateral cricket in the country to Star India for Rs 6,138.10 crore, for a period of five years.

The media rights include both — television and digital media rights — for all international matches played by the Indian cricket team at home from April 2018 to March 2023.

Star India, which retained the rights, will be paying around Rs 60.17 crore per match to the BCCI.

The e-auction process started on Tuesday after the BCCI found three bidders — Star India, Sony Pictures Network (SPN) and Reliance Jio Infocomm — eligible for the process, after scrutinising their technical bids.

At the end of the first day of auctioning, the highest bid was Rs 4,442 crore, while the highest bid was Rs 6,032.5 crore at the end of the second day. The e-auction had resumed on Thursday.

Star India will now have the rights to broadcast a total of 102 matches, as part of the ICC's Future Tours Programme (FTP) in the next five year.

Congratulations @StarSportsIndia on bagging the BCCI Media Rights @ 6138.1 crores at an average of 60.1 crore per game.

— Anirudh Chaudhry (@AnirudhChaudhry) April 5, 2018

The Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) had asked the Board to go for an e-auction as it felt that it was a more transparent method of competitive price discovery.

SPN and Star India were reportedly unhappy about BCCI’s valuation of matches even as the Board had quoted less than the current Rs 43 crore per match.

Star had paid Rs 3,851 crore for the previous media rights package from 2012 to 2018.

Also read: Star India bags IPL's global media rights for over Rs 16,000 crore

The e-auction process

The e-auction was held for the following packages: Global Television Rights and Rest of the World, Digital Rights Package, Indian Subcontinent Digital Rights Package and Global Consolidated Rights Package.

Bidders were allowed to bid for any of the packages and could enter/exit the auction process at any point in time.

BCCI had fixed the first year’s reserve price for television rights at Rs 35 crore and for the next four years at Rs 33 crore.

Reserve price for digital rights for the first year was fixed at Rs 8 crore and at Rs 7 crore for the subsequent four years, according to reports.

Technical bids were submitted before 10 am while the online auction process started at 2 pm (India time) on Tuesday.

At noon on Tuesday, BCCI announced that Star, SPN and Jio were eligible parties to bid for all the three packages.

MJunction — a joint venture of between Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) and Tata Steel — was responsible for helping the BCCI conduct the e-auction.

As many as six companies — Star India-Hotstar, Sony Pictures Network (SPN), Yupp TV, Jio Infocomm, Facebook and Google — had picked the Invitation to Tender (ITT) documents, according to reports.

Who stands where

Both Star India and Sony have a sizeable bouquet of cricket content available on their networks.

In September 2017, Star India had bagged the 'Global Media Rights' of the Indian Premier League (IPL) for a period of five years (2018-2023) for a whopping Rs 16,347.50 crore.

The 'global media rights' include the Indian television, digital as well as the overseas broadcast and digital media rights.

Besides the fresh BCCI media rights awarded on Thursday, Star currently has media rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL), International Cricket Council’s events, Asian Cricket Council’s events, cricket in New Zealand and Bangladesh, along with regional Twenty20 tournaments such as Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL) and Karnataka Premier League (KPL).

Sony has rights to seven cricket boards — Sri Lanka, South Africa, West Indies, England, Australia, Zimbabwe and Pakistan — along with media rights to popular T20 tournaments like Australia’s Big Bash League and the Caribbean Premier league.