MUMBAI: The bean counters at the English Premier League must be licking their chops at the news coming out from Reliance Industries Ltd, India’s largest private-sector enterprise.
RIL is seriously considering bidding for the Indian streaming rights of the Premier League when it opens up, the conglomerate’s latest move in a push to dominate the world’s second-largest internet market, Nita Ambani, a Reliance board member and chairperson of the Indian Super League, told Britain’s Financial Times.
RIL, which is conducting a market study ahead of any move, hopes online broadcasts of contests such as the English Premier League can further the appeal of its Jio mobile and broadband services, Mrs Ambani told FT.
Mrs Ambani said: “I would be very interested to get the digital rights of some of these games to be shown on digital in India.
“We will definitely look at it because I think it’s a huge business.”
For the record, incumbent rights holder Star Sports paid in the region of $90 million for exclusive rights to screen Premier League matches in India in its latest deal, running until 2022, which was itself a massive come down from the $145 million it forked up in previous cycle.
It bears noting that SportzPower, in an earlier analysis, had calculated a $72-$75 million range as being the BEST CASE SCENARIO that the Premier League can expect for the next cycle of rights out of India when they come up for tender in January 2020.
So if Mrs Ambani’s comments that Reliance Jio will be in the race for EPL’s digital rights in the next cycle proves true, that calculation might well turn out to be a tad too conservative.
In any case time will of course prove whether SportzPower is right on the money as regards its earlier assumptions but let it be said that this website would STILL be more surprised if the price was significantly higher than this number than lower.
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