Picture this! We are in the second money spilling day of an action-packed e auction. Media behemoths who haven’t had a great Day 1 – TV and Digital rights are already sold - are looking to go into overdrive.
Similar to inserting an additional ODI powerplay with fewer boundary riders, the BCCI have improvised with a new digital category for IPL media rights – a 18-match bundle of non-exclusive marquee matches.
This Bundle C translates to an opportunity for an OTT platform to live stream some of the most sought-after IPL matches (opening match, 4 playoffs including the final and evening match of double headers) even as another media player has the digital rights for the entire season (Bundle B).
Experts expect frantic bidding in this category for a number of reasons.
As BCCI treasurer Arun Dhumal said ‘a few players who may not have deep pockets to go for the entire gamut of games may want to have a certain pocket of matches. That’s if a smaller player like FanCode were to join the race.
The real drama will begin if one of Viacom 18 and Amazon decide to go all out. One of the two would have lost the race for the full digital bundle – Amazon may or may not bid for the full bundle - and would not want to wait for another five years to win subscribers via the IPL route.
{{/usCountry}}The real drama will begin if one of Viacom 18 and Amazon decide to go all out. One of the two would have lost the race for the full digital bundle – Amazon may or may not bid for the full bundle - and would not want to wait for another five years to win subscribers via the IPL route.
{{/usCountry}}Not to forget the incumbent Hotstar, having already established a subscriber base and good ad revenue stream could also be interested. Sony and Zee both have their own OTT platforms too.
On paper, the new category appears miniscule in comparison to the larger layout – per match base price ₹16 crore, 18 matches to per match ₹89 crores, 74 matches.
But just as the chasing team must break loose when the asking rate is high in cricket, if many participants are desperate, not wanting to miss out, bidding could get accelerated. In which case, valuations in this category may not come cheap. More so because the winner of the entire digital bundle would also not want to hold back, for the real worth of IPL’s digital rights comes in exclusivity.
“Your ad pitch and call for subscribers becomes very weak, if another platform has got the rights to stream the important matches,” said an industry executive. “Remember there is a huge bunch of casual IPL viewers who don’t have the time to watch every match. They may be lured to go for the 18-match subscription, if your competitor is offering them cheap.”
This practice to have separate media partners for different categories is in circulation in well-established American sporting leagues – Amazon is the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football in NFL; Apple has exclusive rights to live stream Friday night MLB games. But the BCCI in trying to innovate are unable to offer exclusivity. With IPL’s limited 2-month window, if the 18-match offer is exclusive, it runs the risk of completely diluting the digital rights.
Will the new category then only rack up the digital price and in turn the overall value to BCCI’s benefit? “It’s also possible that this new category could slightly pull down the value of Bundle B (digital all matches) because the bidders know they still have more money to shell out to ensure they get Bundle C as well,” said an industry watcher.
If anyone felt auctions were a boring game of mammoth numbers, they hadn’t watched their cricket.