The race for cricket’s next great gold rush has already begun. Strikingly, the loudest player in the room is not the one making the first move.
Last week, the ICC quietly armed itself for a high-stakes battle by appointing a five-member working group to map out its media-rights strategy for the 2028-31 cycle. The brief is blunt: protect the current value of its rights, or push it higher, by hunting for smarter, sharper price-discovery models.
Yet the ICC knows the rules of this market. Nobody blinks until the IPL does.
The world body will have to sit tight and watch as the BCCI drafts and releases the next IPL media-rights tender. Only after the IPL sets the benchmark will any other cricket property – including the ICC’s own events – truly come up for sale.
Right now, though, the giant is still in bed.
BCCI’s silence, ICC’s urgency
The Indian board, often described as a sleeping giant that only stirs when it absolutely must, has not yet decided whether to bring in a financial advisory agency to shape the new tender. It did exactly that in the previous cycle, leaning on KPMG to design a document that fundamentally altered how cricket is sold.
There is a twist. BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia sits on the very ICC media-rights working group tasked with plotting the global strategy. The panel is headed by ECB chief Richard Thompson and also includes ICC chairman Jay Shah. The people who will shape the ICC’s future revenue are waiting on a tender that Saikia’s own board has yet to even frame.
That delay is not going unnoticed.
“We were expecting to hear something from them (BCCI) on this. Given the way tech is changing how we consume sport, we thought the board would be keen to explore these changing revenue patterns and models for IPL. Look at the YouTube sports-bundling model in the US, for instance. The NFL Sunday Ticket is a case study in itself,” said an industry executive.
The digital experiment that changed everything
The last IPL cycle showed how quickly the ground can shift.
In 2022, with KPMG’s help, the BCCI wrote a tender that broke from tradition. It carved out a special non-exclusive digital-rights package for the Indian subcontinent – a curated ‘bouquet’ of high-value matches rather than the entire season.
The numbers were stark. Eighteen matches per season in a 74-game structure. That one package alone soared to Rs 3,273 crore, at Rs 33.24 crore per game.
The impact was historic. For the first time, internet rights from the subcontinent generated more revenue for the BCCI than the conventional sale of TV rights. The digital tail didn’t just wag the dog; it dragged the whole beast in a new direction.
Sports executives now look at that model and see only one thing: untapped headroom.
They argue that if the BCCI leans deeper into modular, inventive packaging – especially in the digital space – the value of IPL rights could stretch far beyond the traditional live-feed auction.
Beyond the live feed: cricket’s next frontier
From Friday, BCCI members will gather in Mumbai for their AGM. Those tracking the corridors of power believe one topic towers above all others: the upcoming sale of media rights.
“India has a strong cricket platform. The IPL is already a premium property on that platform. All you need to build on it is effectively what can be done outside of the live match feed. Archives, highlights, documentaries, regional storytelling, fan engagement etc. You may have one or two broadcasters in the race for rights but building a separate non-live consumer base to monetise premium properties selectively is another subject matter altogether,” the industry executive added.
That is where the real battle lies now. Not just in who shows the game live, but who owns the stories around it – the history, the characters, the language-specific content that can lock in fans long after the final ball.
To unlock that, executives argue, IPL needs a modular approach. Break the product down. Package it smartly. Stop handing everything to one player.
“The key aligning principle here must be based on a modular concept, rather than the all-inclusive one that currently prevails,” is the underlying refrain.
One basket, too many eggs
Inside the league, there is already concern about concentration of power.
“Perhaps not a very healthy model either, considering all your eggs happen to be in one single basket,” says an IPL franchise executive, pointing at the league’s heavy dependence on JioStar for live broadcasts.
That reliance might be lucrative in the short term, but it also narrows the ecosystem. Fewer players at the table means fewer experiments, fewer innovations, and less leverage when the next rights cycle comes around.
And then there are the global tech giants watching from the sidelines.
Netflix has largely stayed away from putting live sport behind its paywall. Yet it has not shied away from using sport-adjacent content to keep subscribers hooked. Drive to Survive for Formula 1 is the obvious example in another arena.
The same logic can apply to cricket: live rights are not the only way in. Smartly produced behind-the-scenes content, docu-series, and fan-first storytelling could become the bridge between IPL and platforms like Netflix, Amazon, or YouTube.
The onus shifts to BCCI
So why haven’t those giants plunged into the India cricket market?
“We keep wondering why an Amazon or a Netflix or a YouTube hasn’t looked at the India market. Well, the fact is, the onus lies on us to market our products to them and only then can we catch their attention. So, in the case of IPL rights, the onus certainly lies on the BCCI to go out and start talking to these platforms,” the franchise executive added.
That is the crux.
The ICC has already accepted that the next cycle will demand new thinking and new structures. It has formed its group, set its agenda, and waits with pen in hand.
The IPL, meanwhile, sits on the most powerful cricket property in the world – a league that has already proven it can flip the revenue script and drag the market with it. The question now is not whether the money is out there.
It is whether the BCCI is ready to chase it with the same aggression its players show on the field.
