Broadcasting and Media Giant, Star India has successfully managed to grab broadcasting rights for Indian cricket team’s bilateral home series as well as domestic cricket in a record-breaking Global Consolidated Rights (GCR) bid of Rs. 6138.1 ( about 955 million USD) for next 5 years up to 2013.
The offer at Rs. 60.18 crore per match for coming five years makes Star India remarkably the sole leader in cricket landscape. A very first time in global sports witnessed an e-auction and also had participation from Reliance Jio and Sony Motion Pictures Network India (SPN).
Having acquired rights for Indian home cricket league, Star India has accomplished monopoly in the cricket broadcasting landscape after already having IPL rights for Rs. 16,347 crore and ICC broadcasting right for all tournaments.
Uday Shankar Chairman at Star India was elated while interacting with media and said,
We are the biggest creators of content in India and therefore it is natural for us to be the destination for the biggest Indian sport..that is Cricket! Having both BCCI and IPL under our roof gives us a very special position.
To recap, Star India had paid Rs. 43 crores per match in its previous BCCI deal that happened for 2012-2018 tenure. Six companies were competing to pick for tender documents this time, however, Google, YuppTV, and Facebook did not take part in the bid. An initial bid of Rs. 4,176 crore was raised on 3 April, which gathered speed and reached over Rs.6000 crore mark on Wednesday.
As per the Future Tour Programme, BCCI would be hosting 18 matches in the first year, 26 in second, 14 in third, 23 in fourth and 21 in fifth. The base price has been kept at Rs.43 crore and Rs. 40 crore per match for first and next four years respectively.
While Star India repeated history by outbidding Sony and Reliance, BCCI laughed all its way having grabbed another big million dollar deal.