Discovery and YuppTV will participate in media rights auction for IPL

The annual cricketing extravaganza of India, known as the Indian Premier League or simply IPL, is one of the most popular cricketing events across the world. It is a complete mix of cricket and entertainment in right proportions. Following the craze of the first ten seasons of the event, many companies are trying to get their hands on the media rights of the gala cricket tournament.

In September, the BCCI invited bids for the media rights of the event. Since then, the BCCI has received a massive response as many well-known companies have shown their interest in buying the rights. Previously, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, GroupM, Times Internet Ltd, Amazon India, Facebook and Twitter had purchased the documents to participate in the bidding.

The best event to begin with

Discovery and Yupp TV are the latest to join the bandwagon and try their luck out in getting what will be a very profitable right. Chief executive of TransStadia, a sports infrastructure firm, Hiren Pandit feels if a company is trying to announce its arrival in the online sports section, IPL is the best event, to begin with. “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 while speaking to Livemint.

In February 2015, Star Sports bought the Internet and mobile broadcasting rights of IPL for Rs 302.2 crores. IPL was a major hit in Hotstar as it helped people catch the live action who are not in front of the TV sets. “When Star bought the rights, the data services were much slower compared with now. Now we have 3G and 4G being used actively. From a consumption standpoint, the alternate screen story has only gotten stronger with more eyeballs. So the rights will be sold for a big sum,” said Hiren.

Discovery and YuppTV’s previous ventures

In May, YuppTV bought exclusive digital rights for ICC Champions Trophy 2017 for Canada and non-exclusive rights for Continental Europe. Speaking about Discovery, the company recently launched its sports channel known as DSPORT in February. The channel promises to air about 4,000 hours of live sporting action annually.