Amazon pulls out of high-stakes bidding race for IPL media rights for 2023-27 cycle

Amazon pulls out of high-stakes bidding race for IPL media rights for 2023-27 cycle

Jeff Bezos

Amazon is one of the lead players in acquiring profitable streaming rights across global sports and the e-commerce giant was expected to bid aggressively for IPL’s digital rights packages for the 2023-27 cycle. However, before the start of the auction, which will began today at 11am, Sunday, Amazon pulled itself out of the race and the decision was communicated to IPL on Friday, which was also the deadline for bidders to submit their paperwork.

This year, only seven bidders will take part in the auction; also it’s half of the number of companies vied for the media rights last year. From 2018-2022, Star India had beaten everyone with a record bid of $2.55 billion, and made it the richest deal in cricket. Other bidders this year are- Disney-Star, Sony, Mukesh Ambani‘s Viacom-Reliance, Zee, Fun Asia, Super Sport, and Times Internet.

“Yes, Amazon is out of the race. They didn’t join the technical bidding process today. As far as Google (YouTube) is concerned, they picked up the bid document but didn’t submit it. As of now, 10 companies (TV and streaming) are in the fray,” a senior BCCI official told PTI on conditions of anonymity.

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Four firms have been shortlisted

Amazon
Digital and TV media rights

A souce, who saught anonymity said that Amazon’s decided not to partcipate because the company did not find it a viable option for growth in India. Their investment were over $6 billion and so their withrawl came as a surprise. Recently Amazon also inked a deal to broadcast Thursday Night Football in the United States at $1 billion a season until 2023. And if they secured the IPL digital streaming rights, they could have become a big player in cricket as well. Over the last few days, cricket fraternity were abuzz with the straight fight between the world’s and India’s richest men- Jeff Bezos and Ambani.

“Four firms have been shortlisted for bidding as they filed their final bids and soon we will reveal the name of the winner. The four shortlisted are Viacom 18, Disney Star, Sony and Zee,” the agency quoted a source as saying.

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