StarTV to pay Rs 55 crore per IPL tie, Rs 12 crore more than India game
New Delhi: The Indian Premier League (IPL) today established itself as the costliest sporting property in the world of cricket when Star India bagged the five-year global broadcast and digital media rights deal of the tournament for a staggering Rs 16,347.5 crore.
In what could be termed as the biggest cricketing broadcast deal worldwide, Star outshone its nearest competitor Sony’s Rs 11,050-crore bid for 2018-2022 by making a consolidated offer for television and digital rights in seven categories.
The enormity of the mind-boggling deal could be gauged from the fact that the previous 10-year (2008-2017) IPL bid for broadcast rights–signed by Sony was for Rs 8,200 crore. Now, the BCCI stands to earn nearly double the amount in just five years. The BCCI will earn a whopping Rs 55 crore per IPL match, Rs 12 crore more than what Star has been paying the board for televising the Indian cricket team’s matches (Rs 43 crore).
To put it simply, the IPL has become more expensive than an international cricket match involving India. At present, IPL is, by far, the costliest product when compared to media rights sold for international matches involving English, Australian and Indian cricket as a whole.
Not just that, IPL is also the fifth most expensive global league, behind America’s Major League Baseball (MLB), National Football League (NFL) and NBA and English Premier League (EPL).
Star’s winning bid has overall increased the broadcast rights value of the IPL by 158 per cent, as compared to the previous 10-year cycle. Star held the previous IPL digital rights for the three-year cycle (2015-17), having spent Rs 303 crore for live-streaming of matches on its digital platform, Hotstar.
Now, it has completed its monopoly of the Indian cricket, by winning both broadcast and digital media rights.
What ailed Sony’s equally ambitious bid was that it over-relied on the Indian market. It made a Rs 11,050- crore bid for the Indian television market only. Whereas, Star bid in all seven categories on offer — broadcast rights in India, digital rights in India, and combined broadcast and digital rights for the USA, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the rest of the world.
For the record, Star’s broadcast bid for the Indian market was nearly Rs 4,850 crore short of what Sony wished to offer — Sony’s singular bid was Rs 11,050 crore to Star’s Rs 6,196 crore. Also, Facebook came up with an eye-popping amount of Rs 3,900 crore for digital rights in India, while Airtel was ready to shell out 3,280 crore.
As compared to two bids, Star had only proposed to offer Rs 1,443 crore. Still, it pocketed the deal.
The reason being, it put out a single consolidated global bid of Rs 16,347.5 crore, and it was the only bidder to do so.
In the end, it turned out to be a masterstroke since, as per rules, if the consolidated global bid by an interested company/consortium happened to be greater than the sum total parts of every individual bid, then that consortium stands to win the rights. Accordingly, the sum total of other bids for broadcast and digital rights, excluding Star, was Rs 15,819.51 crore, which was Rs 500 crore less than Star’s consolidated bid. Twenty-four companies had bought the tender document, but only 14 bid at the event held in Mumbai.
Facebook offered $600 million to livestream IPL matches, but failed in its bid
In a ‘bold’ move to stream the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket matches, Facebook placed a $600 million bid to secure five years’ digital distribution rights for the IPL. 
However, Star India bagged the media rights for both TV and digital broadcast worth Rs 16,347.5 crore with a single consolidated bid worldwide during the auctions on Monday.
According to a ReCode report on Tuesday, the fact that Mark Zuckerberg was willing to put up that kind of money “is a big, bold declaration that the company will write real cheques in order to get its hands on must-see sports content”.
Facebook has been looking into more original content for its live video offering, including live sports.