The Indian cricket board hosted IPL’s media rights auction in Mumbai and after discussion among the board members, Star India has emerged the sole rights owner across the world for T20 tournament for the next five years.
Star bagged the media rights for both TV and digital broadcast worth Rs 16,357.50 crore with a consolidated bid worldwide. It piped previous rival Sony who interestingly made an individual bid for broadcast worth Rs 6,196 crore but as per rule, the form a consortium and if its consolidated global bid happened to be greater than the sum total parts of every individual bid they stand to win the rights.
"India, cricket and IPL have changed dramatically since its inception (in 2008) and this bid is a reflection of that," Star CEO Uday Shankar told reporters.
Facebook, Sony and other companies combined that had bid for rights was 15,919.51, which is less than what Star had offered.
In 2008, with a bid of 8200 crores, Sony Pictures Network had won the IPL media rights for a duration of 10 years. The global digital rights of IPL was handed over to Novi Digital (three years) in 2015 for 302.2 crores.