BackBCCI to invite bids for IPL media rights for next 5 years
The BCCI will release the invitation to tender for the IPL media rights on 21 July while the last date for bid submission will be 28 August
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The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Monday reopened the tender process for media rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL) for a five-year period from 2018 to 2022. Both television and digital media rights of the league will be up for grabs.
“The IPL is one of the biggest sports properties in the world and I’m confident the outcome of the tender will do justice to it," said BCCI chief executive Rahul Johri.
The invitation to tender will open on 21 July and the last date for buying bid documents is 24 August, the board said. The bidding process will close on 28 August and results will be announced the same day.
“The IPL governing council at its meeting held on 11 July, 2017 evaluated the IPL media rights ITT (invitation to tender) and reconfirmed that the existing BCCI tender process is the best approach, both in terms of absolute transparency and a free and fair price discovery, for the IPL media rights," the richest and most powerful cricket body in the world said.
BCCI clarified that companies that had earlier purchased the bidding documents for the IPL media rights tender scheduled to be held on 25 October 2016 will be given the latest tender documents on their release on 21 July without any additional cost or charges.
Key potential bidders at the time included Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, Star India Pvt. Ltd, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, Sony Pictures Networks India Pvt. Ltd, WPP Group’s media buying agency GroupM, Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd’s digital media arm Times Internet Ltd, online marketplace Amazon India and social media firms Facebook and Twitter.
Last month, the BCCI awarded the popular T20 cricket tournament’s title sponsorship rights for the next five years (beginning 2018) to Chinese mobile phone company Vivo Electronics Corp. for Rs2,199 crore.
“Just like no one expected the IPL title sponsorship rights to be so high, everyone will try and break the bank to earn the media rights for the most lucrative sports property ever created in India," said Indranil Das Blah, founding partner at Kwan Entertainment and Marketing Solutions, an entertainment and sports marketing agency.
In September last year, BCCI first invited bids to award media rights for the IPL for 2018 and beyond. However, the process was indefinitely postponed since the Supreme Court-appointed Lodha panel had not responded to BCCI’s queries regarding the tenders.
The internet and mobile rights of IPL were last awarded to Novi Digital Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, a unit of Star India, for a period of three years to 2017. In 2009, Sony paid $1.63 billion for IPL’s television broadcasting rights.
The tenth season of IPL got 1.25 billion impressions for the 59 matches played between 5 April and 21 May, a 22.5% jump from the same period in the previous year, according to data released by television viewership measurement agency Broadcast Audience Research Council India.
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