Viacom18 Luggage Indian Cricket Digital and TV Media Rights for Almost Rs. 6,000 Crore

Viacom18 on Thursday created a close to monopoly in Indian cricket broadcasting sphere by bagging each TV and digital rights of the nationwide workforce’s dwelling collection for the following 5 years with a cumulative bid of roughly Rs. 6000 crore, beating Star India and Sony in a three-way battle. 

The BCCI had invited separate e-bids for each linear (TV) and digital for finest worth discovery.

“Viacom18 paid Rs. 3101 crore (approximately) for digital and Rs. 2862 crore for linear (TV). As has been the trend, digital has fetched more in Rs. 5963 crore (approximately) deal.

“With IPL digital rights being purchased by Viacom for Rs. 26,000 crore plus, they now have virtually all of the excessive profile cricket properties save IPL linear (TV) and ICC occasions,” a broadcasting industry source, tracking developments closely, told PTI on conditions of anonymity.

The rights will come into effect with India’s three-match home series against Australia beginning September 22 and end on March 31, 2028.

India will be playing 88 international games across three formats including 25 Tests, 27 ODIs and 36 T20Is with per match value of the deal standing around Rs. 67.76 crore. This is nearly Rs. 7.76 crore more than last cycle’s Rs. 60 crore per match value.

However, the BCCI is getting Rs. 175 crore less than Rs. 6138 crore it received during last cycle which had more games, specifically 102. If one looks at the prevailing market sentiments , it is not a bad price to fetch as the per match valuation has increased. One needs to factor in that only marquee Test matches and series versus England and Australia will fetch a decent advertisement revenue. For matches against other nations, it is only the T20 which is the cash cow.

India will play Australia in 21 games and will be pitted against England in 18 matches across three formats during the next five years.

The BCCI fell way short of the billion dollar mark (at least by Rs. 2300 crore) and one of the reasons forthat could be the declining popularity of the ODI format and there are 27 of them in the next cycle.

“One day bilateral collection save World Cup 12 months needs to be executed away with because it does not convey requisite revenues. With so many T20 leagues additionally occurring around the globe, the viewers’ fatigue also needs to be taken into consideration,” a broadcasting industry veteran said.

He also provided an interesting take on how the potential bidders do their mathematics and arrive at a particular figure.

“In case of 25 Tests, you could have 15 Tests in opposition to England and Australia at dwelling. The type of pitches that’s being ready for Test matches in India, the broadcaster has actually no probability on a lot of the events to commercially exploit the fifth day until there’s a flat deck.

“At times games finish during first session of fourth day. Just calculate how many potential seconds of ad revenue you can lose,” he defined.