MUMBAI: Ahead of next year’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 in the country and in Sri Lanka JioStar the rights holder has formally told the sport’s governing body the ICC that it wants out.
A report in ‘The Economic Times’ noted that Jiostar has said that it cannot service the remaining two years of its four-year India media-rights deal because of deep financial losses.
The four year ICC media rights deal done by Star India was worth a reported $3.1 billion and was done in 2022. That price shocked people given that the next highest bid was a reported $1.4 billion.
The ICC has now approached other platforms to take over and complete the remaining two years.
“JioStar more than doubled its provisions for expected losses on onerous sports contracts in 2024-25 to Rs 25,760 crore, up from Rs 12,319 crore a year earlier,” the report in Economic Times had said.
Whether the ICC can get the price per event that JioStar was paying remains to be seen. Sony is strongly focussed on the bottomline. Netflix is not yet into sports. WWE that it has is scripted entertainment. Prime Video does have the rights to New Zealand Cricket. But presumably the ICC would want its events to air on TV as well as on OTT.
