IPL media rights: Does BCCI have a plan B?

IPL Trophy (photo: BCCI/IPL) The Indian Cricket Board’s reluctance to seek better price discovery ahead of the upcoming IPL and the domestic bilateral media rights tender is weighing heavily on the industry.With about six months to go before the final edition of the 2023-27 IPL rights cycle begins, there are growing concerns among cricket’s biggest stakeholders that the absence of a credible bidder other than JioStar will prevent an accurate assessment of the property’s value, thereby denying the market the competitive tension that has driven IPL rights up for a decade.This sentiment was echoed by none other than Uday Shankar, a media entrepreneur who serves as the vice-chairman of JioStar, at the recent ET World Leaders Forum.“Ten years ago, you would have a few serious media companies (around four) competing for major sports rights. You would have four or more companies really fighting for assets. Today, it seems more and more like we are the only ones standing. And that is not healthy,” Shankar said.“The fundamental problem is that the cost of rights has increased dramatically. But the ability to monetize those rights has not necessarily increased at the same rate. The value of sport is huge, but the rights holder, the broadcaster and the platform all need to participate in a sustainable ecosystem,” he added.The worrying part of this narrative is the absence of a Plan B for Indian cricket. That JioStar will have a healthy IPL offering is a given: its subscription numbers are heavily influenced by cricket consumption. What is baffling is BCCI’s failure to bring more participants to the table.Players like YouTube and Netflix are aggressively getting involved in sports in the West. YouTube’s move to aggregate and pool rights has actually become its own industry trend.YouTube is increasingly approaching sports not as a series of standalone rights acquisitions, but as an anchor to the broader pay TV and subscription ecosystem. Its seven-year deal to exclusively distribute NFL Sunday Ticket in the U.S. — worth $2 billion per season — works both as a value-add for YouTube TV subscribers and as a standalone product sold through YouTube channels.Average revenue per user in the West bears little resemblance to what the subcontinent generates, complicating the assumption that volume alone will win the battle. Even so, Indian cricket remains the only market in this part of the world worth testing the waters for a player like YouTube.Recently, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told The Economic Times that the streaming giant was interested in live sports, including cricket, but had no intention of becoming a “conventional all-season sports broadcaster”.If so, a property like IPL is right in Netflix territory. The storytelling potential of India’s first sports property appeals to a domestic audience of over a billion, a huge global diaspora and markets where cricket remains one of India’s most effective exports and a quiet instrument of soft power.“At some point the economics have to make sense,” says Shankar. For this to happen, the federation itself must take responsibility for marketing what is by all standards a high value product.The IPL may be India’s most valuable prime-time asset. But to assume that a media player several time zones away is fully in tune with India’s story without hearing it firsthand from the people writing it is optimistic at best.It therefore matters that the BCCI comes into this tender with a real marketing strategy: one that puts the IPL in front of dozens of media, technology and streaming platforms around the world that could have a credible interest.JioStar is Plan A of BCCI. The question is whether there is a Plan B or a Plan C.