As soon as BCCI comes out with the Invitation-To-Tender (ITT) to sell the media rights for Indian Premier League's (IPL) 2023-27 broadcast cycle, all the big players – TV18-Viacom , Disney, Sony, Zee, Amazon and another unnamed company – are in the fray. BCCI sources said that American tech giant Apple is also expected to pick the ITT next week.
The BCCI is expecting to raise revenues to the tune of US$7.2 billion when the e-auction for these media rights are held in the second week of June. The deadline to purchase the ITT ends on May 10 after which, the next 30 days will be spent in exchange of clarifications sought on the tender document.
“Transparency will be the key and the revenues coming from sale or rights will be directed to India’s domestic structure, better infrastructure and welfare of the cricketing fraternity,” BCCI secretary Jay Shah said.
The rights will be sold in four separate buckets and the Board, for the first time, has said that it will not allow consortiums or consolidated bids (a sum of all parts) to be put in. Each bidding party will have to separately bid for each package.
The packages have been divided into the following categories: A) Television rights for India subcontinent; B) Digital rights; C) A cluster of 18 matches (season opener, four playoffs and evening matches of the double-headers on weekends); D) Rest of the world.
The overall base-price of the entire rights package has been kept at £3.28 billion. The final figure has been arrived at after BCCI kept the per-match base price of television rights at £4.9 million, digital rights at £3.3 million, 18-match cluster at £1.6 million and rest of the world rights at £300,000.
At 74 matches per season – which amounts to 370 matches over a period of five year s – the total base per-game base price multiplied by the number of matches during the rights cycle totals to the above-mentioned figure of £3.28 billion. The BCCI has capped the matches at 74 per season right now but if matches increase in the coming seasons, broadcaster will have to pay pro-rata going forward.
