The Story:

After a long time, there is finally one court verdict which the BCCI would happily welcome as the Supreme Court has agreed to allow the cricket board to conduct the bidding process for the upcoming broadcasting and digital media right offline.

Earlier, BCCI was under pressure to conduct the auction in an e-tender process to ensure transparency. The issue was brought up by Rajya Sabha member Subramanium Swamy who wrote to the Justice RM Lodha Committee in May, voicing his opinion on introducing e-auctions and then filed a petition in the Supreme Court.

The SC after hearing both BCCI and the petitioner had already indicated its support for the offline process. And, as it turned out, the apex court in Indian has agreed to back BCCI’s approach.

Valid argument results in the victory

The cricket board argued that the e-auction process would lead to losses for them as it would have substantially cut down the valuation of its properties.

“Cricket is not spectrum or coal. An e-auction will devalue the property and it is only the BCCI that will end up losing,” Said the Board while creating to the presentation when to them explaining the benefits of e-auctions.

Huge numbers in the game

BCCI currently possesses the most valuable cricket league in the world – Indian Premier League – whose brand value has risen 26% in 2017 to $ 5.3 billion from $ 4.2 billion in 2016 according to a report published by Duff & Phelps, a New York-based corporate finance advisory firm this week (26th August).

The valuation firm has also projected that the upcoming auction for the media rights, which will be conducted on August 28^th, would see a 1.8 billion USD.

The television right and digital media rights will be sold for a five-year period starting from 2018 to 2022.