Disney- Star, Sony, and Viacom18 engaged in a three-way fight for BCCI media rights
The war for the rights of the Indian team’s home international matches is in its last stage with three entities Disney- Star, Sony, and Viacom18 engaged in a three-way fight.
Notably, companies like Amazon and Google are not a part of the bidding after it was reported that BCCI had approached them to bid for the rights as the board was not getting the expected value from the rights after all the market research.
More so the current market condition has led the BCCI to decrease the value of its rights. One of the reasons for a decrease in the value is the lack of interest from the sponsors as we have seen a significant fall in the number of sponsors associated with an Indian home series which was the case during the last Border Gavaskar Trophy which couldn’t generate as much hype between the advertisers as compared to an ICC event like the T20 World Cup in Australia
Disney- Star, Sony, and Viacom18 front runners for BCCI media rights
There are two reasons why the BCCI is still optimistic about fetching good value through the media rights one is that the board has reduced the number of ODI matches to be played in the new rights cycle and has increased the number of T20Is to be played by India at home which a broadcaster is more interested in.
The second reason is that for the first time, BCCI is selling the TV and digital rights separately which will fetch the board a good sum as digital streaming is on the rise and one of the players who can bid handsomely for digital rights is Viacom18’s digital platform Jio Cinema as it did for the Digital rights of the IPL.
The BCCI however is not selling the rights for men’s and women’s matches separately. “It’s not merely about the coupling or decoupling of women’s matches with men’s, or broadcasters obtaining women’s internationals for free. It’s about the larger picture, which is the progress of women’s cricket,” a broadcaster told Cricbuzz.
