Sports · Media Rights

A Cricket League Just Sold Its TV Rights for $6.2 Billion. Only the NFL Earns More Per Game.

In June 2022, India’s cricket board ran a three-day electronic auction that ended with the most expensive broadcast deal in the history of cricket — and one of the richest in the history of any sport on earth. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) sold the media rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the 2023–2027 seasons for roughly $6.2 billion (₹48,390.5 crore). For a two-month, 410-match Twenty20 cricket tournament, that works out to about $15,100,000 per match.

Most American sports fans have never watched a single ball of IPL cricket. But the number they should sit with is this: on a per-game basis, the IPL is now the second-most valuable sports-media property on the planet — ahead of England’s Premier League and trailing only the National Football League. A league barely old enough to vote has, in financial terms, lapped soccer’s richest competition.

The deal also rewrote the rules of how a marquee sport is sold. For the first time, the BCCI split television from digital streaming — and the digital package fetched more than the TV package, a signal that the future of premium live sport is mobile, on-demand, and Indian. Disney’s Star India took the TV rights; a Viacom18 venture backed by Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, took digital. Two and a half years later, the two winners merged.

$6.2 billion — total value of the IPL's 2023–2027 media rights (₹48,390.5 crore) — the biggest broadcast deal in cricket history · Source: SportsPro / ESPNcricinfo / Reuters
$15,100,000 — value per match — second only to the NFL globally and ahead of the English Premier League · Source: ESPNcricinfo / BCCI
196% — increase over the 2018–2022 cycle (₹16,347.5 crore) — nearly a 3x jump in five years · Source: ESPNcricinfo 'key numbers'

§ 01 / The Auction

The sale ran as an electronic auction that opened on June 12, 2022, and stretched across three days of bidding. The BCCI carved the rights into four packages: Package A, television in the Indian subcontinent; Package B, digital streaming in the subcontinent; Package C, a digital sub-package for a special slate of 18 to 22 marquee games each season, including the playoffs and final; and Package D, combined TV and digital rights across five overseas regions.

When the gavel fell, the total stood at ₹48,390.5 crore — about $6.2 billion. Names that had been linked to the bidding — Amazon, Sony, Zee, and the fantasy-sports firm Dream11 — walked away empty-handed. The contest came down to two heavyweights: Disney’s Star India, the incumbent that had held the rights since 2017, and Viacom18, the joint venture backed by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries.

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India Today: IPL Media Rights — TV Rights Sold for Rs 23,575 Cr, Digital Rights Go for Rs 20,500 Cr

§ 02 / TV vs. Digital — The Split That Mattered

The structural story of the auction was the divorce of television from streaming. Disney Star retained the subcontinent TV rights (Package A) for ₹23,575 crore — roughly $3,020,000,000, or about ₹57.5 crore ($7,400,000) per match. Viacom18 took the digital package and the bulk of the international rights, paying ₹23,758 crore — about $3,040,000,000 — with its core subcontinent digital rights priced near ₹50 crore ($6,400,000) per game.

That digital line item is the headline. For the first time in Indian sports, the streaming package commanded more money than traditional broadcast television — a milestone that broadcasters in the United States and Europe were still circling cautiously in 2022. Times Internet picked up the two remaining overseas regions in Package D: the Middle East for ₹205 crore ($26,300,000) and the United States for ₹258 crore ($33,100,000).

Disney Star takes IPL television rights while Viacom18 takes the larger digital package — For the first time, the BCCI sold TV and digital separately — and the digital package fetched more than television.

“The fact that digital outbid television tells you exactly where the next decade of live sport is heading — to the phone.”
Sports-media analysts on the 2022 IPL auction

SportsPro

@SportsPro · June 14, 2022

The IPL's 2023-27 media rights have sold for a combined US$6.2 billion. Disney Star keeps subcontinent TV; Viacom18 takes digital and most international rights. Digital outbidding TV is the line everyone in this industry will be studying.

§ 03 / Per-Match Economics

To make the scale legible to an American reader, ignore the rupee figures for a moment and look at the per-match number. Spread across 410 matches over five seasons, the $6.2 billion works out to about $15,100,000 per game. The NFL — the gold standard of sports-media economics — commands roughly $17,000,000 per game across its national packages. The English Premier League, the richest competition in world soccer, sits closer to $11,000,000 per match.

In other words, a single IPL match is now worth more in broadcast terms than a single Premier League fixture. BCCI secretary Jay Shah said the cycle would run 410 games — 74 each in the first two seasons, 84 in the next two, and 94 in 2027 — and that the per-match value had vaulted the IPL past the EPL into second place worldwide. For a league founded in 2008, overtaking a competition with a century of history was the flex of the auction.

By the Numbers · Per-Match Media Value

NFL — about $17,000,000 per game. The most valuable per-game rights on earth.

IPL — about $15,100,000 per match. Second globally, and rising fast.

English Premier League — about $11,000,000 per match. Now behind the IPL.

IPL, prior cycle (2018–22) — about $9,000,000 per match. The new deal is a 196% jump.

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§ 04 / The Reliance Play

The winner with the longer game was Mukesh Ambani. His Reliance-backed Viacom18 paid a premium for digital not to make money on the rights alone but to feed JioCinema, the streaming arm that would funnel viewers toward Reliance’s telecom and retail empire. Then, in November 2024, Reliance and Disney completed a merger of their Indian media operations into a single joint venture, JioStar, valued at roughly $8.5 billion (₹70,352 crore), with Reliance holding 63.16% and Disney 36.84%.

The merger collapsed the very split the 2022 auction had created. The two rival winners — Disney Star on TV, Viacom18 on digital — became one company. In February 2025, JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar folded into a single platform, JioHotstar, putting every strand of IPL coverage — television, streaming, and international — under one roof. The competitive tension that drove the price to $6.2 billion had, in effect, been bought out.

Reliance's Mukesh Ambani and the Disney–Viacom18 merger into JioStar — In November 2024, the two auction rivals merged into JioStar — a roughly $8.5 billion venture controlled by Reliance, with Disney as minority partner.

CNBC-TV18: Viacom18 Secures BCCI Media Rights for Indian Cricket Matches

ESPNcricinfo

@ESPNcricinfo · June 14, 2022

IPL media rights 2023-27: ₹48,390.5 crore (~US$6.2bn). 196% up on the last cycle. Per-match value now second only to the NFL, ahead of the EPL. Disney Star: TV. Viacom18: digital + most of international.

§ 05 / How It Stacks Up Globally

Per-match value is one yardstick; total scale is another. By annual revenue the NFL still towers over everything, pulling in north of $20 billion a year. The NBA generates an estimated $10–12 billion annually, and the Premier League’s domestic and international rights ran to roughly £6 billion ($7.5 billion) for a recent three-season cycle. The IPL’s $6.2 billion is for five seasons of a tournament that plays only about two months a year.

That is the detail that makes the figure remarkable. The NFL spreads its haul over 272 regular-season games plus playoffs; the Premier League over 380 league fixtures a season. The IPL extracts its second-place-in-the-world per-match value from a compressed window of roughly 74 to 94 matches a year, built almost entirely on a single, cricket-obsessed domestic audience of well over a billion people. Density of demand, not breadth of calendar, is what the auction priced.

Explainer: IPL Media Rights E-Auction — Disney Star & Viacom18 Win the 2023–2027 Rights

§ 06 / What Comes Next

The next rights cycle — 2028 through 2032 — will test whether the IPL can do it again. With Disney Star and Viacom18 now merged into JioStar, the bidding war that produced the $6.2 billion record may not repeat: one analysis projects the next cycle could stay roughly flat near $5.4 billion precisely because the merger removed the league’s two biggest rival bidders from the table. A single dominant buyer has less reason to overpay.

Whatever the next auction yields, the 2022 result already reset the global hierarchy of sports media. A league that did not exist before 2008 sold five seasons of a two-month tournament for the price of a small country’s budget, beat soccer’s richest competition on per-match value, and proved that streaming could outbid television for the crown jewels of live sport. For an American reader, the takeaway is simple: the next great sports-media markets are not all in the United States or Europe — and the numbers are no longer close.