BCCI’s bilateral rights value grows at a modest 13 percent, Viacom 18 winners

After acquiring IPL’s digital rights, Viacom 18 went after exclusivity for bilateral cricket, taking home both TV and digital rights

Viacom 18 romped home with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) bilateral media rights (2023-28) winning both TV and digital category in the e-auction on Thursday.

Team India players in action during an ODI series against Australia earlier this year (ANI)

The exercise will make the Indian board richer by ₹5963 crore for 88 matches. This translates to a collective per match value of roughly ₹67.8 crore – close to 13 percent higher than ₹60.18 crore paid by Disney Star in the last cycle.

GLASS HALF FULL?

No one wanted to break the bank for bilateral cricket. It is worth noting that the current value falls well short of the ₹78.9 crore Disney Star paid for bilateral cricket in 2023 (the final of the year of the deal) – it was a back-heavy five-year deal – reiterating, that the space isn’t growing.

While the escalation in value may be modest – BCCI received a premium of 40 % in the last cycle – Indian board officials would want to look at the developments with a glass half-full perspective.

The IPL, packaged in a dedicated two-month window featuring world’s best cricketers in the popular T20 format, has well and truly established itself as the premier revenue-generating competition for the game’s richest board. The market response to Indian bilateral cricket, in fact suggests they remain relevant.

No other cricket-playing country barring India, England and Australia can leverage from bilateral cricket anymore, with the landscape having shifted to franchise-based leagues.

DIGITAL EDGES TV AGAIN

The e-auction reinforces the trend of digital outscoring TV value. The winning bid for digital was worth ₹3,101 crore while for TV it was ₹2,862 crore. The growth in the digital space was first established during last year’s IPL rights when it accounted for marginally more value (50.19 %) to TV. This gap has widened ever so slightly to 52 % in the current rights.

In terms of price escalation over base value, TV growth was higher than digital – 63 over 41 %. But it could be a function of broadcast players being clear that they were chasing exclusivity.

Viacom 18 pushed equally hard for both TV and digital rights.

They were up against Sony. “Our disciplined bid was grounded in market forecast, a long-term growth strategy,” N.P. Singh MD, Sony India said in a statement after dropping out from the bidding. Disney Star did not offer any comments suggesting they may not even have participated.

“One platform having both (TV and digital rights) leads to better advantage on bundling and higher negotiating leverage with advertisers,” said Karan Taurani, sports business analyst. The IPL, for example, saw two warring broadcasters eating into each other’s advertising chunk.

“Adverse advertising conditions with new age companies experiencing funding crunch and fantasy gaming sector yet to recover from the new GST regulations would have severely affected price recovery, if TV and digital rights had been split,” said one broadcast executive.

For Viacom 18, this also marks their first big India men’s cricket acquisition for their sports channel Sports 18. Other than IPL’s digital rights, they also hold TV rights for Women’s Premier League, SA20 and Cricket South Africa rights. 88 India matches (25 Tests, 27 ODIs and 36 T20Is) will help them stay in circulation through the year; Test matches are now contextualized with qualification for the World Test Championship on the line.

The current rights cycle will begin with the three-match India-Australia ODI series in September that will serve as the perfect dress rehearsal for the World Cup, and runs till March 2028.