All you need to know about the IPL Media Rights

While India's men's side is busy playing the T20I series against South Africa, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is engaged in a much-hyped e-auction for the Indian Premier League (IPL) media rights.

The IPL media rights will be sold for a period of five years, starting from 2023 to 2027. The rights have been dispersed into four packages: TV Rights (Indian Sub-Continent), Digital Rights (Indian Sub-Continent), Non-Exclusive 18 Matches (Indian Sub-Continent), and TV-Digital rights for Rest of the World (ROW).

The non-exclusive matches include the opening match, final, three playoffs, and a few double-headers.

The composite base price for the auction was Rs 36,000 cr for a total of 410 matches over the period of five years. These rights will be calculated based on the total number of matches shown per season; 74 for 2023-34, 84 for 2025-26, and 94 for 2027.

The base price set per match across each package is A - Rs 49 cr, B - Rs 33 cr, C - Rs 16 cr, and D - 3 cr.

The composite break-up is as follows A is Rs 18,130 cr (74x49x5), B is Rs 12,210 cr (74x33x5), and C is Rs 990cr (18x11x5), and D is Rs 1110cr (74x3x5).

All these packages will be purchased as separate entities. The involved parties can bid for multiple packages as there is no cap on how many rights one can buy.

The BCCI will earn the sum of all these packages, i.e. A + B + C + D. After some fierce action on day one and mid-way into the day two, the auction witnessed TV Rights sold for 57.5 cr per match, while the Digital Rights were picked up from 50 cr per match.

A total of 44,075 cr were earned by the BCCI on just selling packages A and B. Two different bidders ended up winning these two packages.

If reports are to be believed, Viacom 18 has picked package B for 20,500 cr, while package A was sold to Sony for 23,575 cr. These cover a total of 410 matches for five years.

Day 2 of the auction continues as packages C and D are put up for purchase.