ICC Media Rights to come out soon; Broadcasters have lot of questions but few answers

BCCI has raised the bar for transparency by hosting the sale of Indian Premier League (IPL) media rights through an e-auction process, the International Cricket Council (ICC) is asking broadcasters to submit a closed bid when the global governing body's rights tender comes up for sale very soon. The chatter around IPL media rights selling for a boggling Rs 44,390 crore hasn't slowed down yet and it is time already for another big-ticket 'cricket rights tender' to hit the market. In less than 10 days from now, the ICC will come out with its own tender for global rights.

However, for the first time, the governing body is looking to sell the rights across territories separately starting with the Indian sub-continent as against the usual practice of coming out with a global tender. The idea behind the move, and rightly so, is to close the tender first in a market that brings close to 70% of the game's global revenues. Media broadcasters who made a pitch for the IPL auction, and even some who did not, have evinced interest for the same.

However, a majority of these broadcasters have been busy these last few weeks flagging certain aspects of the tender and brought them up in privately held discussions with the ICC. The broadcasters have raised the following points and their reasons behind it. TOI also spoke to ICC chairman Greg Barclayabout the same and his views are mentioned below.

A) The ICC has decided to call for a closed bid. Broadcasters say: Why not call for an e-auction? The recent sale of IPL has conveyed it clearly that an e-auction does help derive optimum price discovery. More importantly, just the way BCCI thinks it is important and rightly so, why is ICC not ready to underline the term 'transparency' here?