Star India has won 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 Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced Monday.
The 'global media rights' include the Indian television, digital as well as the overseas broadcast and digital media rights.
Uday Shankar, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Star India said, "We believe that IPL is a very powerful property and there is lots more value that can be created for fans and viewers".
"We made a conscious call that we will bid for the global rights," he added.
Shankar also said that he expects bigger competition for Indian cricket team's media rights which is slated for auction after a few months.
Star India now holds three major cricket properties - IPL, Indian cricket and International Cricket Council (ICC) broadcast rights.
Both Star India and rivals Sony had been deemed eligible for Indian television rights after the technical evaluation while Reliance Industries-owned Jio, Times Internet, Facebook, Star India and Airtel were declared eligible for the Indian digital rights.
SuperSport, Yupp TV, Econet and OSM (Gulf DTH) were eligible for overseas rights after technical evaluation.
The process was overseen by Deloitte. Sports mechanics did the technical revaluation.
The entire process of the technical evaluation and the opening of the bids was live streamed on the Board's website.
As many as 24 entities had bought the bid documents, before the process had paused. The entities include Star India, Facebook Inc., Twitter, Airtel, Amazon Seller Services, Followon Interactive Media, Qatar-based beIN, Taj TV India, Sony Pictures Networks, Times Internet, Supersport International, Discovery Sports, Reliance Jio Digital, Gulf DTH FZ LLC, GroupM Media, , Econet Media, SKY UK, ESPN Digital Media, BTG Legal Services and Britain's BT PLC.
IPL teams are set to see a windfall of at least Rs 150 crore each from the upcoming season, according to reports in the media.
In August, a bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chadrachud had rejected a plea of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy that the IPL media rights tendering process be stayed and e-auctioning directed.
Previous auctions
In 2008, World Sport Group (WSG) and Sony had bagged the television rights for the Indian market for a 10-year period (2008-2017) for USD 918 million before Sony Pictures Network bought those rights after a re-auction.
Star India was the previous global digital rights holder, having paid almost Rs 303 crore for a three-year period (2015-2017).
In June, Chinese smartphone giant Vivo had retained the Twenty20 cricket tournament's title sponsorship for Rs 2,199 crore for a five-year deal. The deal lasting till 2022, saw a jump of about 554% over the last successful bid made by Vivo itself in 2016.
(Disclosure: Reliance Industries, which owns Reliance Jio, also owns Network18, which publishes Moneycontrol.com.)
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