Top header Banner
Top header Banner
Middle top Banner

Star TV acquires BCCI rights for Rs. 38.51bn

Star TV has stunned its rivals by bagging domestic cricket broadcast and digital rights in India for a period of six years.

Star TV has outbid Multi Screen Media, who was favourite to acquire the rights for its soon-to-launch sports channel, Six. Sony TV’s parent company was second with a bid of Rs. 37 crore.

Star TV has spent an astronomical Rs. 38.51 billion, which means each match cost around Rs. 400 million. The broadcaster has rights for 96 matches between July 2012 and March 2018.

A new tender was issued after the BCCI terminated its contract with Nimbus in December last year, claiming the latter had defaulted on its payments.

Nimbus was paying Rs. 31.25 crores per day for domestic TV rights.

“Star India would work collabaratively with ESPN-STAR Sports to exploit the rights”, said Uday Shankar, CEO, STAR India.

“Right now, we have three sports channels – Star Sports, ESPN and Star Cricket to broadcast the cricket on. However, if required, we could explore the launch of new channels.”

“The BCCI is very happy with the deal. Now the media rights have been fully evaluated and fully priced with Star coming out with a such a deal,” BCCI President N Srinivasan said.

“Following a transparent process of verifying the eligibility of each bidder, the winner was chosen.”