MUMBAI: The race is on to capture the five year media rights to the Indian cricket team’s home matches (102 matches in India from June 2018 to March 2023)

On offer are the television and rest of the world digital rights (GTVRD), Indian subcontinent digital rights (ID), and the global consolidated rights (GCR). And by end of yesterday (3 April), only three bidders – Reliance, Star India and Sony- were left in the fray in the e-auction for the GCR. The reason: the other bidders like Google and Facebook were disqualified as they did not have both a TV and digital presence.

The BCCI on its Twitter handle, through the day, announced which way the price graph was headed. Star India, which had the rights from 2012 to 2018, had breasted the tape by quoting Rs 3851 crore for a total of 96 matches across formats and included internet as well as mobile rights.

But according to BCCI’s Twitter handle, the e-auction bidding commenced with a price of Rs 43 crore per match and an annual payout of Rs 774 crore (in 2018-19); Rs 40 crore per match with an annual payout of Rs 1040 crore in 2019-20, Rs 40 crore and Rs 580 crore in 2020-21, Rs 40 crore per match and Rs 920 crore for 2021-22, Rs 42 crore per match and Rs 882 crore annually giving a total GCR bid of Rs 4176 crore.

That bid was bettered soon with an offer of Rs 4201.20 crore. Another offer of Rs 4244 crore came in according to the BCCI Twitter account.

Reports at the end of the day stated that the bidding went further northward with offers of Rs 4303 crore, Rs 4328.25 crore and Rs 4442 crore being the final quote just as the e-auction for day one ended. BCCI is being assisted by MJunction Services, Deloitte Haskins & Sells and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas to ensure transparency and compliance.

The online auction will now resume today, 4 April at 11 am from the same stage.

Experts opine the BCCI media rights figure could climb rapidly tomorrow and expectations are that bidders could up the rates to between $800 million to $1billion

The BCCI would surely approve.