Recently, The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)has made a modification in their policy. From now onwards consortiums will be allowed for the bilateral media rights auction. This has certainly brought a change, because previously consortiums were not permitted to engage or participate in the media rights bidding, not even in the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction.
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It is still not clear why this policy change has been made by the BCCI. However, it is certainly going to benefit the merger of the Sony Pictures Network India, and Zee Network.
From the outside, it certainly looks like a very good calculated move. The merger of Sony and Zee certainly has the strength to improve the value of media rights. This benefit certainly does not exist, if they are going to take this route separately.
For now, the reports say that on October 1 the merger is going to be complete. It is still not certain whether a consortium is going to be formed or not, but it is clear that the BCCI is not going to mind this.
Amidst these developments, the tender that has been issued by the BCCI basically marks three timelines.
- The auction is going to be done on August 31.
- The inquiries to the BCCI are going to be accepted till August 16th.
- The submission of technical assessment bids needs to be submitted by August 28th.
BCCI has also made it clear that the firms that are going to participate, must have to ensure that their bids are at least 1 Crore. The upcoming 5-year cycle is going to start in September 2023, and it is going to include 88 games. For linear rights, the base price is at least Rs 20 Crores, and the digital packages are going to carry the base price of at least Rs 25 Crores.
