Amazon’s rivalry in India with oil-to-retail conglomerate Reliance Industries is set to turn into a cricket field, where they are likely to fight the media giants for broadcast rights to India’s premier cricket league with its hundreds of millions of viewers. Huh. Amazon.com Inc and Reliance Industries Ltd are expected to take over the Indian units of Sony Group Corp and Walt Disney Co for exclusive five years of TV and digital broadcast rights for the matches of the two-month series, which could run at a cost. Is. A record Rs 50,000 crore ($6.7 billion), said sources familiar with the companies’ plans. Anton Rublievsky, head of Indian Premier League (IPL) betting company Parimatch, said, “Cricket is the second biggest sport in the world with 2.5 billion fans and the IPL is like its Super Bowl. (IPL 2022)
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also read: Sad! Andhra Pradesh Industries and IT Minister Mekapati Gowtham Reddy passed away this morning due to heart attack.
League matches reached 350 million spectators
League matches reached 350 million spectators during the first half of the 2021 season alone. But traditional media firms now face stiff competition from Reliance, India’s largest retailer, and Amazon, the two billionaire-led giants that are building their digital platforms as part of the fast-growing e-commerce market. are competing for. Amazon and Reliance are already locked in a fierce court battle over the acquisition of the assets of Future Group, another large retailer in India. Reliance is also in talks with investors, including foreigners, to raise $1.6 billion for its broadcasting joint venture Viacom18. Winning this bid is crucial to Reliance’s long-term plans for Jio Platforms and its digital expansion, said a source with direct knowledge of the company’s strategy. “What has happened at Viacom18 in the last few months, such as buying the rights to Spanish La Liga and setting up a sports channel, is being worked on,” the source said.
No comment on dollar value (IPL 2022)
Reliance and Viacom18 did not respond to requests for comment. Amazon, whose Prime Video platform recently launched live streaming of cricket matches, is looking to win IPL rights to expand the platform’s user base, another industry source familiar with the company’s thinking said. An Amazon India spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The company lacks a TV platform and will need to bring in a TV partner or it can bid only for the digital portion. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which runs the tender, awarded it to Star in 2017 for a consolidated TV and digital bid that surpassed any of the combined individual bids. Industry sources expect flexibility from BCCI, with prospects for record payouts by bidders, including deep-pocketed digital-only players such as Amazon. BCCI secretary Jay Shah said in an interview with Reuters that the board had studied various models and proposals but did not comment on details or the likely dollar value of the bids.
“We will try our best to get the right price for a tournament like IPL,” he said. Among the media majors, Disney India did not respond to a request for comment, but Disney CEO Bob Chapek told a recent earnings teleconference that the company was confident of achieving its customer target in India even without IPL rights. . Sony’s India entertainment arm said it would evaluate bids for both broadcast and digital rights. However, some in the industry are questioning the sharp rise in the cost of rights and whether it is sustainable. Advertising industry veteran Meenakshi Menon said, IPL has reached a stage where it is too big to fail now and so everyone who is a part of the ecosystem is taking it forward. ( IPL 2022 )
