Mumbai: BCCI has floated Invitation To Tender (ITT) for the e-auction of digital rights of bilateral events that will be held during the period of April 2018 to March 2023 (5 years).
With the digital media boom in its backdrop and sports content being the most preferred genre for digital audience. The competition among various digital players to snatch the rights has gone up by many fold to match with that of the TV Broadcasting rights.
With Social network giant Facebook and search giant Google already in fray and Indian biggies JioInfocomm Limited and Star India’s Hotstar joining them in the race, the ‘war’ for Indian cricket’s online rights for the next five years heats up this week.
The bidding for the same was announced on 20th February and the e-auction of bilateral rights was supposed to be held on 27th March 27. However the BCCI has postponedit to 3rd April, for the sake of send out necessary clarifications to those who had picked up the tender document.
The auction will be held for A) Global Television Rights plus ROW Digital Rights PackageB) Indian Subcontinent Digital Rights Package and C) Global Consolidated Rights Package, as BCCI has done away with the mandatory deferment of telecast on TV and digital platforms.
The base price for the digital rights for the first of five years per match has been pegged at Rs 8 cr and for the next four years at Rs 7 cr per match. The base price for the television rights for the first year is Rs 35 cr per match and Rs 33 cr per match for the next four years.
Facebook emerged as the highest bidder in the category with massive Rs 3900 cr bid for the Indian Premier League (IPL) digital rights last year. However, it lost out due to Star India’s consolidated offer of Rs 16,347.5 cr that emerged as the winning bid.
With Facebook TV looking to make a mark, Google thriving on the video platform through Youtube, JioInfocomm launching an interactive Cricket Channel on JioTV App and Hotstar being an offshoot of Star India’s flourishing television market, sources in the cricket industry say “don’t be surprised if these digital giants have bigger plans than merely bidding for the internet rights”. The market now expects Facebook to come better prepared as the latter surveys the various packages on offer where the cricket rights are concerned.
