In a whopping deal of 720 million USD, Reliance’s Viacom18 has grabbed the digital and television rights to the home cricket matches of India. Viacom18 is owned by billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani and is the parent company of JioCinema.
The deal is for five years and it will include the matches from September 2023 to 2028. It will not, however, include the matches of the Cricket World Cup which will be held later this year. Those rights are still held by Disney+Hotstar.
With this, the company propagates its business in the sports entertainment industry furthermore. JioCinema, a rather new streaming platform, has gathered much popularity because of its streaming of sports events. Previously, Viacom18 has gained the streaming rights of the Indian Premier League for 3 billion Dollars and also the Women’s Indian Premier League for 116 Million Dollars.
Cricket being the most popular sports in India has an immense viewer base and Viacom18 seems to be leaving no stone unturned to create a monopoly in the sports entertainment industry. The domestic cricket rights were again called for auction on the 31st of August by BCCI, with an amount of nearly 721 Million Dollars. Viacom18 has won the rights for 88 games in total and they will be streamed on JioCinema. On television, the games will be broadcast on Sports18.