India's largest media and entertainment conglomerate, the unlisted Bennett, Coleman & Co. (BCCL), has won internet, mobile, radio and some television rights for the Indian Premier League cricket tournaments for the next four years. Its digital media arm, Times Internet Ltd, will pay 2.616 billion rupees (about $58 million) for the 2011-14 rights, starting with the IPL-4 season that opens in Chennai on April 8.
The IPL announced on Sunday that a consortium led by Times Internet - part of the Times of India group, which is ultimately controlled by BCCL and its billionaire owners, Indu Jain and family - was the successful bidder. Another Indian media group, Harish Thawani’s Nimbus Communication, is part of the consortium.
The rights cover internet and mobile worldwide - with a five-minute delay on the Indian sub-continent - and global radio except for the Middle East. The TV rights exclude Australia, South Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Indian sub-continent. Nimbus will handle distribution and broadcast of the various TV rights.
Sony Group’s MultiScreen Media (MSM), which owns the SET Max network in India, continues to hold the Indian television rights under a deal it struck with the IPL in January 2008 and renegotiated in 2010. That deal, which started at $US1.026 billion and initially involved the sports marketing agency World Sports Group, is now worth about $US1.6 billion over a 10-year period.
In June last year, the IPL’s parent, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, cancelled all IPL rights deals with World Sports Group. The IPL, the world’s most lucrative Twenty20 cricket tournament, has set the benchmark for media rights sales since it burst onto the scene with its first eight-team tournament in 2008. But the league has also been beset by controversy over its financial dealings with franchise holders, media outlets and other cricket bodies.
Last April, just before the 2010 tournament was about to get underway, the BCCI removed its high-profile IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi after a clash with Indian politician and author Shashi Tharoor over a new IPL franchise team in the city of Kochi, and allegations of improper financial dealings. Modi, who now lives in the UK because he says he fears for his safety in India, has continued to protest his innocence of any wrongdoing. A BCCI disciplinary hearing against him is due to begin this week.
The IPL-4, with an expanded lineup of 10 teams, opens on April 8 when reigning champions Chennai Super Kings will host the Kolkata Knight Riders in Chennai. The tournament comes close on the heels of the cricket World Cup, the one-day international format which is due to stage its final on April 2 in Mumbai. Cricket is big business in India, where the fan base is the largest in the world and where television reaches potential audiences of hundreds of millions.
The latest IPL rights deal means that India’s most powerful media group now has an even greater interest in covering the tournament. BCCL’s media portfolio includes a television network, newspapers such as English-language flagship The Times of India, the widely read financial daily The Economic Times, plus Hindi, Marathi and Kannada-language newspapers, magazines, FM radio stations, books, film and television production, and outdoor events.
The Jain family took control of BCCL in 1948, 110 years after its first newspaper appeared as the Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce. Indu Jain, widow of the late Ashok K. Jain, chairs the group while her two sons Samir and Vineet are vice chairman and managing director respectively. The group’s annual turnover and earnings suggest it could be valued at about $4 billion. In January, media in India reported that BCCL might launch an initial public offer within two years, though there has been no confirmation of that from the company.
Its main rivals in the India media and entertainment sector are Subhash Chandra’s Zee Entertainment Enterprises, Kalanithi Maran’s Sun TV Network, Shobhana Bhartia’s HT Media and Raghav Bahl’s Network18 Media.
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