What’s the story?
BCCI has revealed that the tender process of the next cycle of IPL television and digital rights will commence on July 17th. The rights will be awarded till IPL 15 in 2022 after the current rights expired at the end of this year’s tournament.
Currently, the television rights are being held by Sony Pictures Network India while the digital and overseas media rights are being held by Star India. The IPL governing council had finalised the dates for various tender processes of the IPL in a meeting at Hyderabad on Saturday.
IPL chairman Rajiv Shukla stated, "I'm pleased that both the governing council and CoA members have finalised the timelines for the next rights period. The early announcement will also help the prospective bidders/service providers to prepare well.”
In case you did not know...
Sony Pictures Network India had been awarded the television rights since the inception of IPL in 2008 and are the current holders of the rights. However, the 10-year period given for the awarding of rights expired at the end of this year’s IPL edition.
In addition, BCCI have adopted a new system of offering the media rights for a period of only five years.
Heart of the matter
The process for the next cycle of IPL media rights was previously planned to begin last September by BCCI. However, it was postponed due to the persisting feud between BCCI and the Lodha panel. Back then, the tender had offered a 10-year period of television rights and a five-year period for media rights. During that time, BCCI were keen to continue with the existing system of rights being awarded for 10 years.
BCCI CEO Rahul Johri stated that since television was very well established and the conventional period for most cricketing tenders was 8-10 years, the board had planned to keep the television rights for 10 years. Since the area where trends were changing fast was the digital one, the board had decided to keep the media rights for 5 years.
Back then, 18 companies had expressed their interest in the rights including Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Reliance Jio.
What’s next?
With everything planned out at Saturday’s meeting at Hyderabad, the tender process for the awarding of broadcasting rights is all set to take place on May 31st.
Author’s take
Sony Pictures Network India have done a terrific job broadcasting the IPL over the last ten years and it will be interesting to see whether they will be given the opportunity to do so again when the tender process begins on July 17th.
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