Bilateral international cricket is the second largest source of revenue for Indian cricket. Following the Apex Council meeting on Sunday, the BCCI will announce the media rights tender.
Will Indian cricket fans continue to invest in multi-format bilateral cricket at home in the same way they do in the Indian Premier League (IPL)?
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will look for an answer as it prepares its media rights tender, which will hit the market after talks at its Apex Council meeting on Sunday. IPL is still the best way for BCCI to make money, but bilateral cricket is still the second-best way.
It is known that BCCI wants to put out a four-year tender (from 2023 to 2027) instead of the current five-year tender (from 2018 to 23) to make its rights more in line with the International Cricket Council’s Future Tours Programme (FTP) and other premium properties like ICC events and the Indian Premier League (IPL). The Indian team is scheduled to play 20 Tests, 21 ODIs, and 31 T20Is at home. This is in addition to multilateral games like the ICC World Cup and the Asia Cup.
A BCCI official said that although the schedule may occasionally be expanded, there won’t be any significant alterations to the FTP, which has been carefully planned with showpiece fixtures like the 5-Test series against England and Australia. To aid India’s preparations for the yearly ICC tournaments planned for that specific year, ODIs and T20Is have been organised.
In order to obtain a true valuation, the BCCI has begun using electronic auctions. The BCCI rights in 2018 and IPL rights the previous year marked the first uses of the online auction method. It also has the choice to return to a closed tender, a strategy that ICC successfully employed. Additionally, a choice must be made regarding whether to enable consolidated bidding or to sell digital and TV rights separately.
We won’t be able to get back to full-fledged bilateral cricket until September. According to a representative, the board is currently consulting with subject matter experts to determine how best to structure the tender.
We may anticipate participation from all three major networks: Disney Star, Viacom 18, and Sony-Zee (soon to be a single company). The previous owner of Disney Star’s BCCI rights (2018-23) paid $6,138,000,000. They paid $3 billion for the ICC rights (2024-23) but sub-licensed the TV rights to Zee for $1.3 billion, according to a source familiar with the transaction. Disney Star paid 23,575 crore for the TV rights to the IPL (2023-27) while Viacom 18 paid 23,758 crore for the digital rights
The Apex Council is also anticipated to approve the invitation of candidates for the position of head coach for the Indian women’s squad. Hrishikesh Kanitkar, India’s batting coach who also served as acting head coach, led the team to South Africa this year for the T20 World Cup. Australia defeated the Harmanpreet Kaur-led team in the semifinals.
The Women’s Premier League has argued that it needs a lot of specialist coaches, much like men’s cricket does, and thus the board’s decision will be severely scrutinised.
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