The stage is getting set for the media rights auction of the Indian Premier League (IPL). . Several big names in the broadcast industry are set to be involved in an intense bidding war for the television and digital rights for the 2023-27 cycle.Star India, which held the media rights for both TV and digital in the Indian subcontinent, from 2017 to 2022, is in the race along with Sony and Reliance-Viacom Joint Venture. The bidding for Package A (TV) and Package (B) has begun and it seems to be an intense battle so far.Lalit Modi, who played a key role in establishing the IPL in 2008, has said the IPL media rights could fetch the BCCI up to USD 10 billion.
"The explosion in the digital space, which we first explored briefly back in 2010, is now a reality. Every life is dictated by the mobile phone and IPL will be no different. Linear TV is still very much the lifeline for an Indian audience. So that is going nowhere. Now add the digital boom and the strength of Linear TV, and we have close to 10 billion dollars," Modi wrote in his blog.At the e-auction, incremental bids will be placed until competitors drop out of the auction process. Notably, the bids will be displayed on a screen without revealing the name of the bidder with the amount on a per match basis for each package.More importantly, the winner of Package A can battle with the highest bidder for Package B, offering to match up to the bid for the latter. The Package A winner will get the chance to place a bid worth 5 percent more than the highest bid for Package B and a new bidding process can kickstart from there. Similarly, the winner of Package B can match the highest bid for Package C and so on. BCCI secretary Jay Shah said that even if the rights go at base price, the value of cricket's biggest tournament would have skyrocketed. According to Jay Shah, the IPL will be just behind the NFL during the season to come.This will be the BCCI's second consecutive broadcasting windfall in its five-year cycles. The full IPL rights were sold to Star India for about $3 billion in 2017, an unheard-of sum for a cricket agreement at the time.
