Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani has added a vast cricket deal to his empire.
A venture backed by Ambani has won the digital rights to air the Indian Premier League (IPL), one of the world’s most valuable sports properties, according to Jay Shah, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Viacom18—a joint venture between Paramount and Ambani’s Reliance Industries—has secured streaming rights for about 238 billion rupees ($3.05 billion), Shah said on Twitter Tuesday. Disney-owned Star India has retained the TV rights with a bid of about 236 billion rupees ($3.02 billion), he added. Both deals run until 2027. That puts the total value of IPL’s media rights at a record $6.2 billion (about Rs400 crore). Just five years ago, Star India paid $2.6 billion for TV and digital rights for five years.”
Ever since its launch, the IPL has been associated with growth and is now a revered date in India Cricket. IPL is now the second-most valuable sporting league in the world in terms of per match value, according to Shah’s Twitter post.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a domestic cricket competition played in India and started in 2008. The competition runs for two months a year, but its value to media companies has soared as the global audience has exploded. On cost-per-match terms, IPL has now overtaken the English Premier League, and ranks behind only the National Football League in the United States. The IPL was launched in 2007 and attracts the world’s best cricketers on big-money contracts. Its massive popularity in India is seen as a foolproof way to expand in the country’s flourishing online media space. Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), founded by Mukesh Ambani—Asia’s richest man with a net worth of nearly $100 billion—inherited an oil business while also investing heavily in other areas such as technology, clean energy, and retailing. RIL declined to comment on how much it makes from IPL or whether it will launch IPL games on its upcoming JioTV platform.
