'IPL's Value Will Double In Next Cycle, It Will Cross World's Richest League NFL'

June 23,2022

Recently, BCCI raked in the moolah as price went over the roof for the IPL media rights e-auctions.

Disney Star and Viacom18 emerged as the highest bidders in their respective packages, taking the Indian Subcontinent’s TV and Digital rights respectively. The entity, formed after Disney acquired 21st Century Fox, won the rights to broadcast IPL in the Indian subcontinent for INR 23,575 Cr ($3.02 Bn). At the same time, Reliance-owned Viacom18 grabbed the digital rights for the competition with a bid of INR 20,500 Cr ($2.57 Bn).

The bids, worth a total of INR 44,075 Cr ($5.64 Bn) have made the IPL one of the richest sporting leagues in the world. IPL becomes the second-richest league in the world in terms of per match value. This also boiled down to 107.5 crores per match, an unprecedented figure in Indian sporting history.

Nonetheless, the founder of IPL, Lalit Modi felt that it was not the BCCI, but the fans who made the broadcasters shell out so much money. He added that companies wouldn’t have paid that much money had they thought it wasn’t unrecoverable. He further said that IPL’s valuation will only increase in coming times.

“It is not them(BCCI). It is the fanbase that has done it. I have always said every 3-4 years it will double. The price of IPL will continue to double in terms of media rights, and it’s gone up by 98% in the last cycle. from the last cycle to this cycle at 98% and I’m telling you now, going forward in the next cycle, it will double again,” he told NDTV.

“The broadcasters are not foolish enough to shell out this kind of money if they’re not going to recover it. There may be a loss in year 1 or so, but not going forward. so I think it is the fans and only the fans that dictate the terms,” he added.

He opined that soon IPL will cross the world’s richest sporting league—NFL.

“It will definitely overtake NFL, I’ve always said it’ll be the no. 1 sports league sooner rather than later, but it all depends on the innovation for the OTT platform, the digital platform.”