Will the $6 Billion IPL Cricket Series Mean Disney is Hit for Six in India?

variety.com:

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief In cricket-mad India the upcoming Indian Premier League tournament could be a watershed for the country’s jostling media empires, according to Singapore-based consultancy and analysis firm, Media Partners Asia.

Video rights for the tournament were split between incumbent pay-TV player Disney Star India, which paid close to $3.1 billion for broadcast rights to the five 2023-2027 editions, and Viacom18, which is backed by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Paramount (as a minority stakeholder), in partnership with financier Bodhi Tree Systems.

It paid a similar sum for the separate digital rights. Media Partners Asia estimates that advertising revenues spawned by the two-month 2023 competition will end up around $550 million – representing a clear loss on the annualized cost of $1.2 billion, or roughly $600 million per conglomerate, for the tournament rights. (The analysis firm forecasts that RIL will earn $300-350 million in ad sales, while Star’s best-case scenario is $220 million.) For deep-pocketed RIL that may be a justifiable loss leader.

But for Disney the scale of those losses as well as other headwinds, may force a strategic rethink. Controlling the digital rights allows RIL to attract customers to its Reliance Jio mobile broadband service and win new viewers for its Jio Cinema platform, while simultaneously offering for free a service that Star is charging for.