New Delhi: Viacom 18 on Thursday bagged both TV and digital rights of the national team’s home series for the next five years, creating a monopoly in the Indian cricket broadcasting sector.
The Mumbai-based media company beat Star India and Sony in a three-way battle with a cumulative bid of approximately ₹6,000 crore. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had invited separate e-bids for both linear (TV) and digital for best price discovery.
Digital and TV rights
“Viacom 18 paid ₹3,101 crore (approximately) for digital and ₹2,862 crore for linear (TV). As has been the trend, digital has fetched more in the ₹5,963 crore (approx) deal. With IPL digital rights being bought by Viacom for ₹26,000 crore plus, they now have almost all the high profile cricket properties save IPL linear (TV) and ICC events,” a broadcasting industry source said on condition of anonymity.
The rights will come into effect with India’s three-match home series against Australia beginning September 22 and ending on March 31, 2028.
India will play 88 international games across three formats including 25 Tests, 27 ODIs and 36 T20Is with per match value of the deal standing around ₹67.76 crore, about ₹7.76 crore more than last cycle’s ₹60 crore per match value. However, BCCI is getting ₹175 crore less than the ₹6,138 crore it received during last cycle which had 102 games.
BCCI fell way short of the billion dollar mark (at least by ₹2,300 crore) and one of the reasons for that could be the declining popularity of the ODI format. There are 27 ODIs in the next cycle.
“One-day bilateral series barring World Cup year should be done away with as it doesn’t bring requisite revenues. With so many T20 leagues also happening around the world, the viewers' fatigue should also be taken into account,” a broadcasting industry veteran said.
How do potential bidders arrive at a particular figure?
The veteran also provided an interesting take on how potential bidders arrive at a particular figure.
“In case of 25 Tests, you have 15 Tests against England and Australia at home. The kind of pitches that are being prepared for Test matches in India, the broadcaster has literally no chance on most of the occasions to commercially exploit the fifth day unless there is a flat deck. At times, games finish during first session of the fourth day. Just calculate how many potential seconds of ad revenue you can lose,” he explained.
