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In a watershed moment, the BCCI, on April 3, will sell the media rights for international bilateral cricket in India for the next five years (2018-23) through an e-auction.

It will mark the first instance in sports that media rights will be sold via an online auction.

Till date, the Indian cricket board used to sell its rights through a closed-bid auction.

However, the top-officials opted for an e-auction to bring more transparency to the whole procedure. BCCI CEO Rahul Johri and Supreme Court-appointed committee of administrators (CoA) played a significant role in the process.

Here is all you need to know about the e-auction

What is an e-auction?

In this process, the bidders file the bid through an online portal. The companies file incremental bids till the competitors drop out. The highest bidder left bags the rights.

Reason for opting e-auction:

The motive behind opting for e-auction is to make the whole process as transparent as possible. The close-bid auction used to leave a lot of questions unanswered and drew widespread criticism.

A Number of companies in the race:

As many as six global companies have bought the bid document. The bidders are – Star India, Sony Pictures Network India, Facebook, Google, Reliance Jio and Yupp TV. On April 3, the BCCI will evaluate the technical and financial feasibility of all six companies. The actual bidding process will get underway at 2 pm IST.

A Number of categories:

There are three categories on sale – the Indian television rights cum rest of the world digital rights (GTVRD), digital rights for the Indian sub-continent (ID) only and the global consolidated rights (GCR) comprising the television rights for the Indian subcontinent, rest of the world and the worldwide digital rights.

Base price for the categories:

There are two different base-prices or per-match-values (PMV): one for the 2018-19 season and the other for the rest of the four-year period. The reason behind the same is that the ICC’s new global FTP would start after the 2019 World Cup.

For the 2018-19 season, the per-match-value for the GTVRD is INR 35 crore, INR 8 crore for ID and INR 43 crore for GCR. For the 2019-23 period, the per-match-value for the GTVRD package is priced at INR 33 crore, INR 7 crore for ID, and INR 40 crore for GCR.

How will the winner be determined:

The highest bids across all three categories will be showed live simultaneously on the screen. The potential bidders will need to file the highest amount they would want to pay (per season) along with the break-up of the category they want to contest. The names of the bidders will not get revealed. The reason behind it is that no rival can increase its price after seeing the competitor’s bidding amount.