BCCI to sell WIPL media rights through a closed tender

Quality of the project, not huge valuations to be the Indian board’s top priority

Following the decision to introduce pay parity at the elite level by announcing equal match fees for India’s men and women cricketers, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has moved to give women’s cricket its own wings by announcing the release of media rights tender for the first five years (2023-27) of the upcoming Women’s Indian Premier League (WIPL).

BCCI logo (HT Photo)

“There is a lot of excitement around women’s cricket and we are hopeful the broadcasters are equally excited about this new project,” Arun Dhumal, IPL Chairman said. “The objective is to celebrate women’s cricket. With the performances Indian team has been delivering and the pool of players that are available now, we think that the market is now right.”

This being a launch project for women’s cricket in India, it is learnt the BCCI will not be commercially, very ambitious, to begin with. They are reverting to closed bidding, with no base price set for the tender. A composite (TV + digital) bid option is also being made available to broadcasters, with an equal emphasis on the nature of the bid – how the broadcaster plans to market the product.

Industry experts peg the expected media rights value to be modest in the first five-year cycle. To give context, the upcoming T20 leagues -- ILT20 and SA20 are fetching around ₹100 crores from media rights annually from the Indian market. Both these leagues are vying to be the second-best in the men’s game, way behind the IPL which pockets ₹9,678 crores per year.

The BCCI has already communicated to its state units that the inaugural WIPL will be played in March and will be limited to 22 matches, five teams and a maximum of 18-players per team. When men’s IPL was launched fifteen years back, it was 59-matches long, involved 8 teams, with some franchises having more than 25 players in the squad.