Indian Cricket Board Reaches Out to Amazon and Alphabet to Boost Interest in Media Rights Auction

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is wooing Amazon.Com Inc AMZN and Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL to bid in a media rights auction for the Indian cricket team's bilateral series games.

The firms had recently competed fiercely for the Indian Premier League.

The board postponed the auction process for the media rights by at least two weeks to attract more firms to participate, Bloomberg cites familiar sources.

Also Read: IPL In Rear View, Disney Star Looks To Make Bank From Cricket World Cup Advertising

Media firms have shown lukewarm interest in the auction due to challenges in making money from cricket content amid weak advertising revenues. The shorter-format IPL remains the most popular cricket property with higher viewership.

Ernst & Young (EY) expects the sale of rights to 102 matches to fetch at least $750 million, similar to the price five years ago. In contrast, IPL rights surged threefold in the previous auction.

The IPL remains one of the world's most popular sporting events. Still, media companies have faced difficulties generating profits.

In 2022, BCCI raised record amounts of money by selling media rights for the IPL through an auction. However, the dynamics have changed since then, with Mukesh Ambani's JioCinema offering the 2023 edition of IPL online for free and Walt Disney Co DIS facing difficulties generating profits due to weak advertisement revenues.

Viacom 18 Media Ltd, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, and Disney had outbid rivals in the previous IPL auction.

Viacom 18 will likely aggressively bid for digital media rights to the bilateral series, while Disney may take a cautious stance amid cost reduction efforts.

Star India, a Disney unit, had bought the media rights for the bilateral series for 61 billion rupees ($741 million) for five years from 2018 and has incurred losses of about 10 billion rupees from the asset.

A decision to break up the media rights into digital and linear and conduct an e-auction for the current auction is due.

Price Action: AMZN shares traded lower by 0.99% at $130.99 premarket on the last check Wednesday.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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