The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will unbundle television broadcasting and digital rights for future bilateral series involving the national team, harnessing the value-maximisation template used earlier for bidding out the five-year Indian Premier League (IPL) rights that fetched the world’s richest administrator of the sport more than $6 billion.
A senior BCCI official, on the condition of anonymity, told ET that the board is seeking to extract the maximum value from both TV and digital rights. The BCCI media rights, likely to be auctioned by July, are expected to be keenly contested among Disney Star, Viacom18, and the Sony-Zee combine. Some industry experts believe the property will be valued in excess of ₹15,000 crore, or nearly $2 billion, for the next four- or five-year block.
“While we are still finalising the contours of the BCCI media rights auction, we will be unbundling the media rights this time by selling TV and digital rights separately,” the top BCCI official told ET.
The official cited above said the board is “bullish” about the value of the BCCI media rights, which should see a significant enhancement in value. “We are bullish about the growth in the value of BCCI media rights considering most big cricket properties have doubled in value,” added the official.
The value of IPL media rights has tripled to ₹48,390 crore for the 2023-27 cycle following the separation of TV and digital rights. By contrast, Disney Star had paid ₹16,147 crore for the five-year composite media rights of the IPL between 2018 and 2023. The media rights agreement between Disney Star and BCCI for the bilateral matches ended in March. The broadcaster had paid ₹6,138 crore for the five-year media rights, which translated into about ₹60 crore per tie for a total of 102 matches.