“IPL will become No.1 sports league”: Lalit Modi believes investment in digital will make IPL the best sports league in the world

Lalit Modi believes investment in digital or OTT platform technology is the way forward to making IPL the best amongst all sports leagues.

When the action-packed three-day event of the IPL media rights e-auction came to an end, the world saw the Board of control for Cricket in India (BCCI) scale new heights in terms of revenue generation, with the board set to earn a whopping and jaw-dropping amount of INR 48,390 Crore for the upcoming five-year cycle (2023-2027).

For context, amount earned by the board during the previous five-year cycle was INR 16,347.5 Crore, which was around three times lesser than the present one.

The above numbers have meant the combined per-game value of the IPL via sale of the four media rights package stands at $15.1 million, thus making it the second-biggest sporting league in the world in terms of the ‘per match broadcasting fee’.

It is now only behind NFL, with a per-match value of around $36 million, which it is supposed to earn following an 11-year deal (2022-2033) worth an estimated $113 billion, signed last year.

Lalit Modi believes investment in digital platform technology will make IPL the best in the world

Former chairman, commissioner, and founder of the Indian Premier League, Lalit Modi, during an interview with NDTV on Saturday, exclaimed that he had envisaged the IPL to be recession free quite some years ago, and that people had a nice laugh at this remark back then.

Modi stated that he had always maintained that the marquee league’s valuation will double in three or four years, and it is the fan base which has proved his prediction to be true.

“It is the fan base that has done it (increase IPL’s valuation). I have always said that in three or four years it will double. The price of IPL will continue to double. If you look at all my interviews from 2008, I said that IPL value will double in terms of media rights.

“The viewership is now probably highest in the world in terms of number of people watching and the eye balls getting attracted to the game. I have always maintained, and everybody laughed at me, that IPL is recession proof. It really is coming out to be true that is recession proof as far as India is concerned,” remarked Lalit Modi.

 “The younger age group is mostly on digital, that is why the digital rights have gone up tremendously”: Modi

He further stated that with the youth mostly consuming the digital media, an investment in improvement of technology of the digital platforms to improve the users’ viewing experience would definitely make the IPL the No.1 sports league in the world.

“I have always said IPL will become No. 1 sports league sooner than later. It all depends on the innovation for the OTT platforms, the digital rights. If we are able to do our act right in digital, you will see digital overtaking television in terms of viewership and in terms of revenue, remarked Modi.

“Because the younger age group is mostly on digital, that is why the digital rights have gone up tremendously in price but their experience has not been so good in India today as far as watching it on a particular platform,” he further added.

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