Champions League Twenty20 2008 Live Broadcast
ESPN strikes $975m deal for T20 league
Sept 12, 2008
Cricket economics has once again hit the roof. Sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has paid a staggering $975 million for exclusive global commercial rights for the Twenty20 Champions League for a 10-year period, starting with the inaugural tournament between December 3-10 this year.
The deal, which gives ESS rights for all T20 Champions League seasons until 2017, makes it the highest cricket tournament by value on a per game basis. Earlier this year, the World Sports Group-Sony Entertainment consortium had paid BCCI $918 million for 10-year global rights for the India Premier League (IPL).
Apart from ESS, bids were received from Abu Dhabi Sports Club and Dubai Investment Council (DIC). While the DIC bid was for $751.3 million, Abu Dhabi Sports Club’s bid, being a conditional one, was disqualified. ESS had bid $900 million for the deal and an additional $75 million for marketing.
Twenty20 Champions League, modelled after the football champions league, would feature the best teams of the domestic Twenty20 tournaments in various countries. It is being jointly organised by the Indian, Australian and South African cricket boards. The inaugural league, with $6-million prize money, will feature eight teams — two each from India, Australia and South Africa and the champions from the England and Pakistan domestic leagues. The prize money will be shared between the teams and their players.
“This deal will cement our relationship with BCCI, Cricket Australia and Cricket South Africa and we are committed to setting new benchmarks in broadcast and distribution,” ESS MD Manu Sawhney said in a statement. IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi said: “We believe this is the best commercial deal for Champions League.”
The T20 league was originally scheduled to be held in September-October this year, but BCCI had to postpone its plans under pressure from the ICC, with the league dates too close to ICC’s Champions Trophy. Subsequently, Champions Trophy, too, was deferred to late next year, interestingly under pressure from ESS itself.
ESS is expected to market the T20 Champions League tournament aggressively to advertisers, riding on the huge commercial success the T20 format generated for IPL’s broadcast rights holder Sony Entertainment in April-May this year. Sony Max had raked in over Rs 300 crore during the IPL while the BCCI had earned a profit of Rs 350 crore from the event.
Sony Max, in fact, had sold IPL spot rates for the final at a record rate of Rs 10 lakh per 10 seconds, bettering even ESS’ track record, which had sold 10-second spots for the first T20 India-Pakistan World Cup final. Sony had even set a precedent by offering category exclusive deals to advertisers across select categories at a premium.
The IPL final had delivered ratings of 9.8 and the tournament had redefined prime time entertainment on television with average TRPs higher than all soaps and reality shows.
