No song and dance, it will be ‘serious cricket’
: During its 10 years of existence, the IPL has come to be known as much for its masala as for its high-voltage cricket. Well, that was Sony Pictures’ style of broadcasting. Girls dancing in lavish studios before kurta-pyjama clad commentators took centrestage became a part of the IPL experience.
As the media rights changed hands on Monday, there’s a lot of interest as to what changes the new broadcaster will bring about. Star Sports, who bagged the global rights, are the most dominant players in cricket broadcasting but have so far concentrated on cricket action. Their top boss, Uday Shankar, promised it will continue to be the case even in the cash-rich T20 league. “You have seen on Star Sports (that) our focus is strictly on the sport. We believe that the spotlight should be on the sport and we will continue to do that… I am not commenting on what anybody else does,” Shankar told Hindustan Times after leading his company’s successful bid. He refused to accept that Star India had monopoly over the Indian cricket market. “Our BCCI rights get over in less than six months and the Indian team, over the next few years, is going to be travelling abroad so much, and we don’t have the England and Australian board rights. With IPL, we have a breather,” said Shankar. The bidding was so close that it could be termed a last-ball win for Star India. A difference of only around ~500 crore in a bid of ~16,347.5 crore proves how they got their strategy right. “If it (our figures) were slightly less, we would not have got the rights. We won by a really narrow margin of 2-3 per cent, so we were very close (in predicting the right value of IPL),” Shankar said. Though the IPL remains a robust property, the league has been plagued by controversies, and the BCCI itself is under scrutiny. So, did Star take these factors into account before the bid? “Whatever controversies might have been, they have been there all the time, but the IPL has gone on to become bigger and bigger. It is for the news media, we are a sports broadcaster.”