Related Rights of Broadcasters - IPL

Since the time IPL has started everyone is benefitting from it. The team franchises, team squad, team members, boards governing the event, franchise owners, broadcasters etc. This post will be more inclined towards the profits which are being made by the broadcasters and the related rights which they posses on the broadcasting of an event (which in our case is IPL). Coming as a surprise to many of us IPL became the first sporting event to be broadcasted by the popular video sharing website Youtube. As per the UK-based brand consultancy, Brand Finance Indian Premier League’s brand value is estimated to be around $4.13 billion (which comes out to be Rs. 18,000 crore) in 2010. If we rate IPL on the basis of team salaries then it takes away the second slot, next only to NBA league.

Now let us have a look at this Mecca of Marketers from the broadcaster’s point of view. The rights of the broadcaster are very important in relation to the sports program. These rights provide them with the exclusive license to broadcast the sporting event of which the rights have been assigned to them, thus making the overall offer of providing a large sum of money in advance to get the related rights of the event look attractive and lucrative.

For IPL the global broadcasting rights were given to a consortium of India’s Sony Entertainment Television network and Singapore based World Sport Group. The duration of this deal was 10 years and its cost was $1.026 billion. Later due to a dispute between the Sony/WSG and IPL the price of the deal was raised almost by two times to Rs 8,200 crore for duration of 9 years. But this was not the end of the road for Sony/WSG, they further resold their broadcasting rights to other companies thus getting in some margins for themselves. They kept broadcasting rights of India with them (because of the reason well known to all). Below is the summary of broadcasting rights around the world.

WINNING BIDDER	REGIONAL BROADCAST RIGHTS
Sony/World Sport Group	India
ONE HD	Australia
Spy Network Television	New Zealand
GEO Super	Pakistan
SportsMax	Caribbean
ITV	UK
Astro	Malaysia
PCCW	Hong Kong
Star Hub	Singapore

IPL as a tournament has been very creative in giving its broadcasting rights. In no time companies will be coming up with the new concepts of 5 minute delayed rights, 10 minute delayed rights etc. Already such an instance has happened in UK. Where ITV holds the right of broadcasting both on TV and on the internet and Youtube also is broadcastin but with a 5 minute delay.

So our recommendations to all the marketers will be that they must staytuned to this mega event of IPL as it introduces new concepts of promoting as event as a brand.