Star India pips Sony to bag IPL media rights for 5 years with record bid of 16347.50 crores

Photo: BCCI

New Delhi: Star India has bagged the Online and TV broadcasting rights of the Indian Premiere League for a period of 5 years from 2018-2022 piping Sony with the highest bid of 16347.50 crores.

The IPL media rights rested with Sony for the past 10 years but Star has outbid Sony to win the rights in a bidding process that involved heavyweights like Reliance Jio, Facebook, Airtel, BamTech and DAZN/Perform Group.

14 out of 24 companies joined the final bidding process.

After the short listing process, the only eligible companies who filed the necessary documents were Sony Pictures and Star India for India broadcast. SuperSport, Yupp TV, Econet, OSM (Gulf DTH) for Rest of the world. Airtel, Reliance Jio, Times internet and Facebook for India digital

The rights have been segregated in two categories -- broadcast and digital (internet and mobile) rights.

The rights include Indian sub-continental TV rights, which is the most coveted along with emerging Indian sub- continent digital rights.

There is also rest of the world media rights on offer which includes key international markets like the Middle East, Africa, Europe, USA, Australia and New Zealand.

All the rights are for a period of five years from 2018-2022.

In 2008, Sony Pictures Network won the IPL media rights for a period of 10 years with a bid of Rs 8200 crore. The global digital rights of IPL for a period of three years was awarded to Novi Digital in 2015 for 302.2 crore.