The International Cricket Council will start its first ‘Invitation To Tender’ (ITT) for media rights for the 711 games at its global events in the next eight-year cycle, beginning 2024 from 20 June onwards, it said in an official release on 17 June.
The ICC will be following the conventional sealed bid process with separate bids for both men and women matches, unlike BCCI’s e-auction process for its IPL media Rights. The packages include multiple women’s U-19 T20 World Cups.
This would be the first time, ICC will sell men’s and women’s rights separately and prospective partners can bid for 16 Men’s events — over 8 years, and six Women’s events — over 4 years, totalling 362* and 103* matches respectively. Apart from these 465 games, there are additional games of U-19 men’s and women’s games.
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The interested bidders will have to submit a bid for the first four years of men’s events. However, they also have the option of bidding for an eight-year partnership.
“International cricket consistently attracts huge audiences and that is driving significant interest from broadcasters for ICC events. We have more than one billion fans that passionately follow the game globally, and they will be looking forward to seeing the best players in the world competing for cricket’s most prestigious trophies,” ICC Chief Executive Geoff Allardice said.
“There has been significant growth in interest in women’s cricket over the last five years and we have made a long-term strategic commitment to accelerate that growth and unbundling the rights for our women’s events will play a huge role in that. We are looking for a broadcast partner who is excited by the role they will play in growing the women’s game and ensuring more fans than ever before can enjoy it,” he further added.
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This time, ICC has kept the bidding process much more linear than the BCCI with three specific packages for both men and women.
Package A is TV Rights, ‘B’ is Digital Rights and ‘C’ is combined TV and Digital Rights in both categories. In men’s category there are two specific durations — 4 years and eight years.
The ITT is for the Indian market only, with up to six packages available across TV only, digital only or a combination of both.
With inputs from PTI
