Five-year exclusive TV and digital broadcast rights for the Indian Premier League will be up for grabs for retail and entertainment majors.
When it comes to competing for television rights to India's top cricket league, Amazon and oil-to-retail behemoth Reliance Industries are expected to go head-to-head. The two companies are expected to duke it out for the rights to the league, which has hundreds of millions of viewers.
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| [File: Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters] |
sources familiar with the companies' plans said Amazon.com Inc and Reliance Industries Ltd are expected to compete with Indian units of Sony Group Corp and Walt Disney Co for exclusive five-year TV and digital broadcast rights to the two-month series of matches, at a cost that could reach a record 500 billion rupees ($6.7 billion), according to sources familiar with their plans.
According to Anton Rublievskyi, president of Parimatch, a betting business that promoted during last year's Indian Premier League (IPL), cricket is the second-largest sport in the world, with 2.5 billion spectators. "IPL is like the Super Bowl of cricket," he said.
"If you're not there, you don't exist," says the narrator.
The digital and television rights were purchased for 163.48 billion rupees ($2.2 billion) by Star India, which is owned by Disney and is one of the top broadcasters in India, alongside Sony and its planned acquisition Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. Star India paid 163.48 billion rupees ($2.2 billion) for the digital and television rights until 2022. Specifically, during the first six months of the 2021 season, 350 million spectators tuned in to watch the matches.
Traditional media companies, on the other hand, are facing stiff competition from deep-pocketed rivals such as Reliance, India's largest retailer, and Amazon – two billionaire-led behemoths competing for a piece of the fast-growing e-commerce market while simultaneously expanding their digital platforms.
In the meantime, Amazon and Reliance are embroiled in a high-stakes legal dispute over the acquisition of Future Group, another major Indian retailer.
Viacom18, a joint venture between Reliance and Viacom, is in the process of raising up to $1.6 billion in funding from investors, including overseas investors.
In the words of a person with direct knowledge of the company's strategy, "winning this auction is important to Reliance's long-term aspirations for its Jio platform and its digital development."
"Everything that has transpired at Viacom18 in the previous few months, including the acquisition of La Liga rights in Spain and the establishment of a sports channel, has been leading up to this," the insider explained.
Requests for reaction from Reliance and Viacom18 did not receive a response.
Obtaining the IPL rights would allow Amazon, whose Prime Video platform just began broadcasting live cricket events, to increase the number of people who use the platform, according to another industry source familiar with the company's thinking.
A request for comment from a representative of Amazon India was not responded to.
Because the firm does not have a television platform, it would either need to partner with a television provider or would only be able to bid on the digital side of the contract. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which administers the tender, awarded it to Star in 2017 after a consolidated television and digital bid from the company outperformed all of the individual bids combined.
According to industry sources, the BCCI would be flexible in light of the potential for record payments by bidders, including a deep-pocketed digital-only operator like Amazon.
In an interview with the Reuters news agency, BCCI Secretary Jay Shah stated that the board has reviewed a number of different models and offers, but he declined to provide any specifics or estimate the anticipated cash worth of the bids.
"We will do all in our power to get the appropriate value from a competition like the IPL," he added.
For example, Disney India did not reply to a request for comment, but Disney CEO Bob Chapek stated during a recent earnings teleconference that the business was confident in its ability to achieve its subscriber objectives in India even if the company did not have the license to broadcast the IPL.
It has been announced that Sony's India entertainment subsidiary would review offers for both broadcast and digital rights.
Some in the business, on the other hand, are concerned about the rapid increase in the cost of the rights and whether or not it is sustainable.
"The Indian Premier League has reached the point where it is now too big to fail, and as a result, everyone who is a part of the ecosystem is propping it up," said Meenakshi Menon, a veteran of the advertising sector.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
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