IPL media rights: 'It's not the price at which you win but the price at which you let it go'

Indian Premier League (IPL) media rights auction starting Sunday is not about the price at which you win it. It's about the price at which you let it go. In that lies the answer to who will end up winning the bouquet of cricket's most coveted rights anywhere in the world. Every bidder that logs in for the e-auction process beginning this Sunday will have drawn up an exit strategy. That will mean, every bidder will bear a figure in mind beyond which the company will say 'it is not worth it". This process will keep repeating until all players exit and only one bidder (or two, maybe) will remain. 'So, you see, an e-auction becomes a fascinating process by itself because it's not about the price at which you think you can take it away. It's the price at which you stop and say, 'I can't go any further' that makes all the difference. The higher that limit you set for yourself, the more you move closer to grabbing it," a top industry executive tells TOI. 'Nobody will tell you this now, because nobody will talk and frankly nobody knows what that magical figure might be. But wait for the auction to get over and every single bidder who hasn't won it will remind you that the price at which it eventually went was not worth it. That will be the case because they did not see value in it," he adds. Here's an attempt, after speaking to top select industry executives and number-crunchers, to see what kind of value can this auction process derive.

'Now, if we're allowing logic and Star's numbers across TV and digital over the last five years to dictate this process, let's remind ourselves very clearly - these rights won't sell beyond Rs 42 or 43,000 crore at best. At a maximum, that's the price that any bidding party will manage to