Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) expected to garner Rs 20,000 crore from the Indian Premier League (IPL) media rights that were announced on Monday in Mumbai. After the bid documents were submitted by 14 companies, Star India emerged as the highest bidder for the TV and digital content in the country with a bid of Rs. 16,347.50 crores. The overall combined bid was Rs 15,819.54 crores. The winning bid will allow Star India to air content on their properties for a period of five years (2018-2022).

The second highest bid was made by Sony, who bid Rs. 11,050 crores, for the rights. However, Sony’s bid was for the Indian region only as compared to Star’s bid which is global. Third highest bid was made by Facebook worth Rs 3,900 crores for digital content.

The bid documents were picked up by 24 teams with the rights divided between television and digital and further allocated according to region. After assessment of bids, Reliance Jio, Times Internet, Airtel and Facebook had emerged among the top bidders for digital rights and Sony, Star Group for TV rights.

Of the 14 companies which expressed interest, BamTech were disqualified for missing fundamental documents and BeIN Sports will undergo further scrutiny after failing to submit financial statements under the Qatari law. SuperSport, Yupp TV, Econet, OSM (Gulf DTH) have emerged as the eligible companies to broadcast IPL content after their bid dcouments were evaluated by Deloitte, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Sports Mechanics.

Previously, Sony held the broadcast rights in the country while Star India held the digital media rights. Even by conservative estimates, BCCI were expecting to make a windfall of Rs 12,000 – 14,000 crore which would help not just the board’s coffers but also that of the IPL franchises with this pool further divided among the eight franchises.
Following the 24 bid documents being bought, 14 bidding companies have showed interest in taking up the process further with Amazon, Taj TV, Gulf DTH, Group M, Media India, Sky UK Ltd, ESPN Digital Media, BTG Legal Services, BTPLC , Twitter and Discovery backing out.

The IPL media rights have been divided into seven different categories — Indian television rights, Indian digital rights, the US, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and rest of the world.

Sony held the TV rights for the event since 2008 when it bid Rs 8,200 crore for a period of ten years with the league starting off at that stage. A year later, and after a resounding success, Sony and BCCI renegotiate the figure and it rose to $1.63 billion. In 2012, Star Group paid Rs. 3,851 crore for rights to telecast the matches played on Indian soil. This deal ran from 2012-2018. As far as title sponsorship is concerned, Chinese handset maker Vivo had bid a whopping Rs 2,199 crore in June. A massive rise in comparison to Rs 50 crore per year price that DLF had paid for the first five seasons.