ICC Chairman Greg Barclay (on left) and BCCI President Sourav Ganguly[/caption]
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is planning to initiate the process to sell the media rights for the next cycle (2024 to 2031) almost 24 months in advance.
Why the haste?
According to the available information, reported the Inside Sport yesterday (16) in India, the ICC will start the process before the end of this year.
The global body of cricket is worried about the Indian premier League (IPL) rights tender hitting the market in 2022. And to counter that, the world body has decided to start the media rights selling process almost 24 months before the end of the ongoing cycle.
BCCI (IPL) vs. ICC over TV rights
It is worth noting that the current cycle of ICC goes on till the year 2023 and the next cycle will only start in 2024, stressed the above report, shedding light on the fierce competition between two bodies, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) who organises the IPL and the ICC which governs the sports in the globe, on the TV rights market .
“ICC is initiating the process to sell media rights 24 months early because of fear that IPL media rights can walk in with the larger pie of budgets available at the end of potential bidders,” added the Inside the Sport.
“It’s right. ICC is initiating the selling process before the end of this year. They don’t want to get caught in the crossfire as BCCI is likely to launch IPL media rights tender before March-April 2022,” a well-informed source in ICC has told the Inside Sport.
ICC to distribute rights territory wise
“Another big change would be that ICC this time is likely to shun the process of selling all rights to one broadcaster as is the case with the current cycle of ICC rights where Star holds the entire global pie. ICC is likely to distribute their rights on territory to territory basis,” the above ICC source has revealed.
“ICC is thinking that the first port to sell the rights will be the Indian Subcontinent. The rest of the territories will be released for selling at a later stage. The platform has also learnt that ICC has already initiated dialogue with regular suspects like incumbent Disney Star, Sony, Viacom (coming up with a sports channel soon), Amazon, and others in the territory. All of these discussions are being initiated informally as ICC will release the formal process only by the end of this year,” the report further explained.
A purple patch for ICC
The next seven-year cycle of rights, from 2024-31, will have two ICC Men’s Cricket World Cups (in 2027 and 2031), four Men’s T20 World Cups (2024, 2026, 2028, and 2030), two Champions Trophies (2025 and 2029), and four World Test Championship finals (2025, 2027, 2029, and 2031).
Apart from senior men’s events, there will be women’s events as well as the Under-19 events.
The ICC rights value
What are the values expected by ICC? At the time of selling the last cycle of rights in 2014, ICC almost got a jump of 80% in the value of their rights portfolio. Though ICC did not divulge the value, the Inside Sports said that the ICC deal that time was valued at $ 1.9 billion (approximately Rs. 378 b to the present value). The cycle before that was valued at $ 1.1 billion, the report remembered.
Though the source in the ICC had refused to divulge targeted value for the rights for the new cycle, the said report has estimated that the ICC can fetch a value close to $ 3 billion (Rs. 598 b) for the rights on offer this time.
IPL rights value
The estimated value by the Inside Sport is more than what IPL rights fetched in its current cycle. Star India won the five-year IPL rights for $ 2.55 billion or Rs. 508 billion.
When will BCCI release its IPL media rights tender?
“According to the informed sources in the BCCI, the Indian board is currently focussed to sell the two new IPL teams for the league. The process to sell two new IPL teams will be completed by the end of October. Once that is done, BCCI will put their energies on the selling of the next media rights cycle,” said the above report.
2022 a tricky year for ICC and BCCI
“We will come out with our IPL rights tender before the next IPL (2022) season. We should complete the process before the next IPL ends,” a top BCCI official had been quoted by the Inside Sport as saying.
“It is clear that the year 2022 will be critical for the sport of cricket. The sport’s governing body ICC and the world’s most powerful board BCCI releases their biggest commercial assets for the sports broadcasting and media market to feast on,” summed up the report.
Will market pay big bucks for these big-ticket properties, it queries.