With the recent loss of broadcasting rights to India’s bilateral cricket matches, Disney Star has slowly made way for Viacom18 to become the home of Indian cricket. At one point, Disney Star had the rights to broadcast three major cricketing properties in India—Indian Premier League (IPL), International Cricket Council (ICC) events, and India’s bilateral matches across formats.
On August 31, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) declared billionaire Mukesh Ambani-backed Viacom18 as the winner of both the TV and digital rights to India’s bilateral, men’s and women’s T20I, ODI and Test matches for a reported sum of Rs 5,963 crore, till 2028.
Apart from this, Disney Star had also lost the digital rights of IPL to Viacom18 in 2022. Now, it only has the IPL TV rights and ICC digital rights, while it had announced its plan in August 2022 to sub-licence the ICC TV rights to Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL). But that one-of-a-kind deal is also hanging fire as ZEEL and Sony Pictures Networks India are in the midst of a merger. Disney Star’s parent Walt Disney is also reportedly looking to hive off the India business, or find a joint venture partner amid plans to cut around $5 billion in costs. Thus, it is closely focussing on return on investments here. Given the eye-watering sums that cricket broadcasting rights command and how broadcasters have struggled to make profits on it, the popular sport has seemingly taken a back seat at Disney Star.
Viacom18, meanwhile, is on a growth spurt. Since mid-2022, it has acquired several properties that were with Disney once, as it scales up JioCinema. “Their digital-first strategy is pushing them towards sports because they want to acquire users,” says Uday Sodhi, Senior Partner at Kurate Digital Consulting and former head of SonyLIV. “The timing is great because Disney has been slow on investing in sports and it’s a good time for Viacom18 to acquire all the sports rights for the next five to six years, build viewership and then convert them into subscriptions, much like what Disney+ Hotstar did.”
@SaysVidya