The much delayed Indian Premier League (IPL) media rights for the 2023-2027 cycle is likely to be out in the coming week as it was discussed in the Governing Council meeting on Friday (March 25).
As per reports, the GC has cleared the media rights tender for the IPL for the cycle of 2023-27 and the Invitation To Tender (ITT) document is expected to be out on Monday or Tuesday.
Earlier, Star India, the current official broadcaster of the cash-rich league, had paid a whopping Rs 16,347.5 crore for the 2018-2022 cycle.
In February 2022, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) chief had said that he was expecting a rise of more than double in value of IPL rights for the next 2023-27 cycle.
“12,000 Crore for sale of two franchises was phenomenal. Fingers crossed, we should get 40,000 crore plus from the IPL Media Rights. The tenders will be conducted soon by the BCCI”, expressed Ganguly on a chat show ‘Backstage with Boria’.
Earlier in October, the BCCI had already fetched Rs 12,725 Crore from the sale of two new IPL franchises – Lucknow and Ahmedabad.
While RPSG Ventures Ltd. had acquired the Lucknow franchise for Rs 7090 crores, the Irelia Company Pvt Ltd. (CVC Capital Partners) bagged the Ahmedabad franchise for Rs 5625 crores.
“50,000 Crore for the Indian cricket, BCCI can and will further take sport to the next level. Already IPL has benefitted Indian cricket big time & with these monies the sport can go to completely different level”, the BCCI chief added.
One of the main reason for the increase in the IPL media rights value would be increase in the number of matches from next season. Moreover, compared to last time, the upcoming auctions is most likley to see a rise in number of bidders like Reliance Industries promoted Viacom, global players like Amazon and others besides Star and Sony.
Significantly, the tender for IPL media rights, which should have been out by now, was earlier delayed mainly due to the uncertainty surrounding the Ahmedabad franchise, whose owners — CVC Sports — received the Letter of Intent from the Indian board after a long delay.
Meanwhile, in the GC meet, a decision was taken that all efforts will be made to start a six-team annual Twenty20 tournament for the women’s cricketers and first preference will be given for the existing IPL franchises.
Speaking to reporters after the IPL Governing Council meeting, Ganguly said: “It (the full-fledged women’s IPL) has to be approved by the AGM. We plan to start it by next year hopefully.”
On the other hand, IPL chairman Brijesh Patel said that there will be four matches for the three women teams during the upcoming men’s IPL play-offs. “There will be four matches involving three teams around the time of the playoffs,” Patel said after the meeting.