‘IPL AD REVENUE LIKELY TO TOP ₹2,000 CRORE THIS YEAR’

NEWDELHI: Uday Shankar, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Star India Pvt. Ltd and the president of Twenty-first Century Fox, Asia, may be a selfconfessed cricket fan, but his massive investment in two big cricket properties—media rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)— have been well-thought out business decisions.

Last week, Star India retained BCCI media rights for all cricket played in India for ₹6,138.1 crore, outbidding Sony Pictures Networks and Jio (Reliance Industries Ltd), while last September, it won the television broadcasting and digital media rights to the Indian Premier League for a princely sum of ₹16,347.5 crore.

Both the rights are for a period of five years.

“Although I don’t usually talk numbers, we will exit IPL with an advertising revenue of ₹2,000 crore this year,” he said over the phone from Mumbai.

This is much higher than the ₹1,200 crore that the premier cricket tournament is said to have made for Sony Pictures Networks last year.

Shankar expects the property to make money both on digital and television.

“The target is to reach 70 crore Indians with IPL this year. Last year, 41 crore people watched IPL on television,” Shankar said.

Star plans to expand the reach of the cricket tournament through the language feeds which offer commentary in regional languages.

Other than Hindi and English, commentary for the matches is now available in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali.