MUMBAI: Asia Cup 2022 official broadcaster Star Sports released its promo for the upcoming continental T20 tournament and no surprises for guessing that the “enticing India-Pakistan clash” would make the “highlight reel”.
Just how eager the people who matter among cricket’s stakeholders are for India-Pakistan clashes, public posturing in India notwithstanding, can be garnered from the fact that the Asia Cup schedule was first tweeted by the Asian Cricket Council president Jay Shah rather than off the ACC’s official Twitter handle.
The six-team tournament’s schedule is structured in a manner that as good as guarantees that India and Pakistan will face off at least twice, and in a best case scenario thrice, in the course of the tournament.
Rohit Sharma’s Team India are set to face Pakistan in their first game on August 28 and (hopefully for the bean counters) could well face off for a third time in the summit clash on September 11.
Star Sports is potentially looking at three consecutive Sundays of India-Pakistan matches at prime time and has already made nearly Rs 400 crores in advertising revenue bookings for the event, SportzPower understands. Industry sources have told this website that Disney Star’s media rights payout for the tournament is somewhere in the region of Rs 550-600 crores. So adding syndication plus distribution revenues to the ad sales income should the network a healthy profit.
And that, in a nutshell, tells the story as to where the principal premium will be garnered for the upcoming ICC media rights sale for the Indian subcontinent.
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