More than 20 bidders in race for IPL media rights

What's the story?

More than 20 businesses have bought the Invitation To Tender (ITT) for the media rights of the Indian Premier League. The submissions for the same are scheduled for next Friday (September 1).

In case you didn't know...

The submissions of the IITS were first scheduled for August 28. However, taxation and bank holiday issues led to the postponement of the same.

In January 2008, Sony Pictures Networks took up the broadcast rights of the IPL for a decade. The tenth edition of the tournament was played this year, thereby ending its association with the media company.

MP Subramanian Swamy recently submitted a petition to the Supreme Court, where he asked for an e-auction of the media rights so as to add to the transparency to the process.

Lalit Modi, the founder of the tournament, talks about this dynamic competition for IPL media rights in his tweet below:

Great to see #Amazon #Yahoo @Twitter @facebook amongst 20 bidders for #IPL media rights Predicted this 10 yrs ago https://t.co/TQczFR1wVg pic.twitter.com/4U1yH9Ys4E

— Lalit Kumar Modi (@LalitKModi) August 24, 2017

The details

The primary contenders in the pool of bidders include Star India Pvt Ltd, Sony Pictures Networks India Pvt Ltd, Amazon Seller Services Pvt Ltd and Reliance Jio Digital.

Apart from these organizations, companies like Followon Interactive Media, Times Internet Ltd, Gulf DTH, SuperSport International, GroupM Media India, beIN IP, Econet Media Group, Sky UK, ESPN Digital Media, BTG Legal Service, Twitter, Facebook, Discovery, Airtel, Yahoo and DAZN Perform Group and BT Sport are also in the race.

What's next?

The Supreme Court hearing is scheduled for Tuesday (August 29), after which the concrete nature and structure of the auction will be decided upon.

The BCCI is open in terms of the types of bids that they will receive this time. They include consolidated bids, breakdown of bids or a combination of both. While the consolidated bids will work well for television broadcasters in the race, it might pose a problem for the digital media brands therein.

Author's take

The increasing number of big brands that have been associating themselves with the IPL points towards its wide-spread popularity. According to a recent report from Duff & Phelps, the tournamant is now valued at Rs. 34,000 crore, showing a straight 26 per cent rise from its 2016 numbers.

With the brand value that IPL has generated for itself in the last few years, the bid something massive like its media rights will go as high as it possibly can, it seems like for the moment.