Star India has bagged the Indian Premier League (IPL) global media rights for the next 5 years for a whooping amount of 16,347.50 crore (USD 2.55 billion). Several big companies like Facebook, Twitter, Sony Pictures, Airtel, Jio and others were involved in the bidding.

Sony, the only other bidder for the TV rights of the world’s richest domestic Twenty20 competition, offered £1.33bn but lost out to Rupert Murdoch’s Star for the worldwide rights from 2018 to 2022. It means for the first time the broadcast rights for a single IPL match are worth more than an India home international.

A total of 24 companies had picked up the Invitation To Tender (ITT) to bid for the broadcast and digital rights in the Indian subcontinent and global markets for the next five years. However, only 14 of the 24 names turned up with their respective bids, which meant that there was no participation by the likes of Yahoo, Amazon and ESPN digital.

The media rights include broadcast (TV) and digital (mobile and internet) for various segments namely India, Middle East, Africa, Europe and America.

"India, cricket and IPL have changed dramatically since its inception (in 2008) and this bid is a reflection of that," Star CEO Uday Shankar told mediapersons.BCCI CEO Rahul Johri, on his part, said: "Our main endeavour to the stakeholders was to provide a transparent process where there should not be any iota of doubt."

In 2008, with a bid of 8200 crore, Sony Pictures Network had won the IPL media rights for a duration of 10 years. The global digital rights of IPL was handed over to Novi Digital (three years) in 2015 for 302.2 crore.