Sports

IPL Media Rights 2023-27: Viacom18’s Big Digital Play

June 15, 2022
Bharat Times

Two days before the new cycle of Indian Premier League’s media rights for 2023-2027 went under the bidding hammer, major news broke out. Amazon Prime Sport (c/o Amazon) had not submitted a technical bid for evaluation, thus implying that it had pulled out of the race.

Prime Sport is huge, especially in the American and European markets, and for a long time, it had been flirting with cricket rights, particularly those concerning the Indian sub-continent. It had made the first foray into the cricket market by securing New Zealand broadcast rights for the Indian territory, and then bought the IPL media rights tender as well. Those tracking these developments knew Amazon had a particular eye on Package C of the IPL rights.

IPL Media Rights Fetches INR 48,390 crore, Viacom18 Bags Digital Rights

What is Package C? It’s the cherry on the proverbial cake, the prized bullet of the 2023-2027 media rights, the money maker for the BCCI, and the premium anybody had to pay to enjoy a monopoly on IPL’s digital rights. While Package A (linear/TV rights) and Package B (digital rights) were straightforward, Package C consisting of 98 non-exclusive digital matches across five seasons was the curve ball. (All three rights’ packages were for the Indian Territory only.)

In simpler terms, this meant that 410 matches were available for TV (package A), 410 matches available for digital (package B) and a further 98 matches available non-exclusively for another digital platform (Package C). Of course, the winner of Package B retained the right to challenge Package C and thus could aim for exclusivity for its digital property. Different packages meant there could potentially be two or more different broadcasters for the upcoming five years of IPL, and this is precisely what the BCCI envisaged in order to gain a premium value for its most prized property.

And it did gain proper bang for its buck. The IPL media rights have been sold for a whopping INR 48,400 crore (6.2 billion USD) making the T20 extravaganza the second most valuable sporting property after the NFL. Disney (Star) retained the TV rights (Package A) at INR 23,575 crore (INR 57.50 crore per match for 410 matches).

Meanwhile, Viacom18 has made a humongous digital play, winning Package B at INR 20,500 crore (INR 50 crore per match for 410 games) and Package C at INR 3,273 crore (INR 33.24 per match for 98 games). What is the implication herein? For starters, for the first time in history, an Indian cricket property will be simultaneously broadcast on two major broadcast platforms (not counting DD National or DD Sports).

Further, Viacom 18 has not only won the right to broadcast 410 IPL games on its digital platform(s) over the next five years. But it also paid a high premium to keep 98 of those matches exclusive to its own platform(s). In simpler terms, Viacom18 will be paying INR 50 crore for 312 games for the next five years, while paying a whopping INR 83.24 crore for 98 games, including season openers, evening games on double-header days and knockouts.

For the previous 2018-2022 cycle, Facebook put in the highest bid for digital rights for 300 matches (60 matches per season) at INR 3900 crore. At 60 matches per season, that amounted to INR 13 crore. Now, in just five years’ time, that value has skyrocketed 3.9 times for 312 matches across IPL 2023-2027, and another 6.4 times for 98 particular games during the same cycle.

Of course, Disney too made a major play during the bidding for Package C to go with re-winning Package A (linear/TV rights). It made perfect business sense considering its own digital platform Disney+ HotStar, which boasts of 40-plus million Indian subscribers. This drove the digital valuation further up, but by every means, Viacom18 was ready for this battle.

How so? Again, while Facebook had put in the maximum digital bid for the 2017-2022 cycle five years ago, Airtel and Jio (Reliance) had put in the second and third highest bids at INR 3280 crore and INR 3075 crore, respectively. It implies that even five years ago, Reliance had its eyes on this digital content business riding on the IPL bet. It comes as no surprise then that Viacom18 (with Reliance subsidiary TV18 owning 51 per cent stake) has gone on to claim these rights at a premium.

At this juncture, the obvious question herein is who has the upper hand? Is it Disney (Star) with television rights or Viacom18 with its mega digital play? It isn’t an easy answer. For one, India is the only Southeast Asian market where Disney still operates linear broadcast channels. Even so, only 35 per cent of the Indian population has access to a television set and the number falls lower for cable/satellite/DTH access.

India is the world’s second-largest and quickest growing telecom market. By the time Covid-19 pandemic set in, nearly 900 million Indians had access to mobile Internet, which is also an ever-increasing number still. Reliance’s Jio has particularly contributed to this fast-paced growth, already owning a major chunk of India’s telecom sector.

And it explains why various long/short-form content platforms have risen up over the past couple of years in the Indian market including Jio TV and Viacom18’s Voot.

In prospect, these two platforms should fuel Viacom18’s cricket content centred on the IPL property for the next five years. Further, there is a bigger game at play. The Internet marketplace isn’t just about content anymore.

It is about providing services, whether telecom or otherwise, and penetrating the consumer layers through different channels (that already exist in the Reliance ecosystem). Herein, the Amazon example comes forth again. Video/audio content (including sport) is only a by-product of Amazon’s Prime services. The main service is product delivery through its online marketplace and distribution channels.

This is the exact blueprint for Reliance and Viacom18 in its bid to leverage the IPL rights. Content may be king, but nothing beats consumerism via telecom and household services in the 1.4 billion-strong Indian market. IPL cricket will then just be a cherry on top of the proverbial ice cream.

(Disclaimer: News18 Cricketnext is a platform under Network18, which is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd. and a holding company of TV18, which is a major shareholder of Viacom18. The author, a freelance cricket journalist, is not an employee of any organization aforementioned and the views here are expressed independently.)

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