Broadcast Companies who bought the IPL Bid document in 2016 still eligible says BCCI

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced that the 18 companies that bought the Invitation to Tender (ITT) document for IPL broadcast rights in October 2016 are still eligible to bid for the media rights for the period 2018-2022. The board also announced that the companies can submit their bids before the August 22 deadline. Recently, two new enterprises also joined the bidding process- Discovery Communications and YuppTV.

Earlier in September, the BCCI invited bids for the media rights of the Indian Premier League. Since then, the BCCI has received many responses as many of the well-known companies have shown their interest in buying the rights. However, it is learnt that all the previous 18 companies remained eligible at no extra cost before the intervention of the Lodha Panel into BCCI’s proceedings.

It was never their fault

“All the companies that showed interest in 2016 while buying the ITT are automatically eligible to submit their bids. It was not their fault that BCCI was not allowed to go ahead with the process. They won’t be charged any extra cost for bid document. Now we have 20 companies including YuppTv and Discovery Communications that are eligible,” said a senior BCCI official, as quoted by News18.

The 18 eligible companies include some of the big names like Star India, Amazon Seller Services, Followon Interactive Media, Taj TV India, Sony Pictures Networks, Times Internet, Supersport International, Reliance Jio Digital, Gulf DTH FZ LLC, GroupM Media, beIN, Econet Media, SKY UK, ESPN Digital Media, BTG Legal Services, BT PLC, Twitter and Facebook Inc.

The two new companies Discovery and YuppTV will also join them in the bidding for the media rights, which is considered to be a profitable source.

“IPL is the highest viewed sports property. If you’re launching into sports online you’d want to start with IPL. I’d imagine companies like Reliance, Discovery, Amazon, Star will bid aggressively,” said Hiren Pandit, chief executive of TransStadia, a sports infrastructure firm.

The whole process

The three categories in which the rights are divided are as follows: Indian Sub-continent Television Rights, Indian Sub-continent Digital Rights and Rest of the world (ROW) Media Rights. The board revealed the deadline as 22 August for all the bids invited. However, the BCCI is still waiting for Supreme Court’s hearing on August 22 on the issue of whether e-auction is necessary for the event.