5 things to know about Star India winning IPL media rights

Mumbai: As many as 24 companies were in the fray to bid for media rights of all Indian Premier League matches for five years from 2018 to 2022. The bids that were up for grabs were divided into two categories of television and digital streams.

Many such big companies in the digital world as social media giant Facebook, e-commerce major Amazon, micro-blogging site Twitter, search engine Yahoo, new 4G entrant Reliance Jio, Sony Pictures, knowledge channel Discovery, news media Sky, British Telecom and ESPN Digital Media had either shown interest in purchasing the bid or took part in the auction.

Star India outsmart other companies in the race as the Rupert Murdoch-owned company's India arm had loosened its purse string to put in a single consolidated bid for all the segments instead of bidding for each segment separately. Other companies which eyed a chunk put in singular bids. At a time, they either bid for television rights or threw their wallet at the digital rights.

Industry watchers say the current auction process and its outcome will definitely make television advertising during IPL matches a much costlier affair. At present an advertisement of 10 seconds duration costs a company somewhere between Rs 4-6 lakh.

That amount is surely going to go up due to the huge aggregate bid put in by Star. It is most likely that Star India may charge a company anything between Rs 13-16 lakh for running an advertisement of 10 seconds duration during the IPL matches.

Here are five things that you should know about the deal that saw many big companies losing out to Star India despite they had offered a good sum.

1- For Star India, bidding for IPL media rights was a do or die situation as it wanted the rights at any cost. According to Uday Shankar, Star India CEO, it was like "getting everything or losing everything" for the Murdochs-owned TV network.

2- This is why Star did not shy away from quoting a colossal Rs 16,347.4 crore or $2.55 billion consolidated bid for grabbing television and digital media rights for five years from 2018 to 2022. Shankar had later described the deal was not an "insane" bargain.

3- It is interesting to know that Star India outbid Sony network for acquiring television rights, despite the latter quoting a singular bid of Rs 11,050 crore which is Rs 4,850 crore more than Star India's Rs 6,196 crore bid. Star's collective bid gave the network an upper hand.

4- The per match fee for one IPL match amounts to Rs 54.5 crore after doing a calculation, that is Rs 11 crore more than what Star India is paying for one one-day game of Indian cricket team. There will be a total of 250 IPL matches over fives years. The company at present pays Rs 43 crore for a one-dayer of Indian cricket team.

5- This time social media giant Facebook also threw its hat in the ring and was part of IPL auctioning process. Facebook came up with a huge Rs 3,900 crore bid for digital right for its Indian users. Here also Star outweighed rival bidder as it had put in an aggregate bid of Rs 16,347.4 crore.