The Board of Control for Cricket in India has sought bids for title sponsor rights for events, following the exit of Mastercard Inc. in March 2023 as the title sponsor for team India. The board, in a statement, said that the tender will have a non-refundable fee of ₹1 lakh and will be available for purchase for the next three weeks.
In September 2022, Mastercard had temporarily taken over from Paytm (One97 Communications Ltd), which had signed a deal with the board for ₹326.80 crore in 2019. Paytm was to fork out ₹3.8 crore per match, about 58% higher than the earlier ₹2.4 crore deal, but in July 2022, the company requested BCCI to assign the rights to Mastercard till March 2023.
The payment-processing company has not renewed its deal with BCCI after March, and the board intends to find a replacement as the next bilateral series in India is in September.
In June this year, Dream11 replaced Byju’s as the jersey sponsor of team India in a deal that cost the company ₹358 crore. This deal was closed two weeks after the board had announced it was looking for a new jersey sponsor after its deal with troubled edtech company Byju’s ended abruptly.
Experts have told Mint that this could be a year of correction for BCCI. There are three important rights where BCCI makes revenue for team India. These include, jersey, title and kit sponsorship rights.
In June when it invited applications for the Indian team’s jersey rights, its base price was 40% discount from the winning bid in the previous cycle. The base price was set at ₹3 crore for every bilateral match featuring India and ₹1 crore each for matches played as part of the International Cricket Council (ICC) or the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) tournaments, which included the ICC World Cup and the Asia Cup, respectively.
Previous sponsor Oppo had paid ₹4.61 crore per match. In 2013, too, there was a decline in rates when Star India paid ₹1.92 crore per match organized by the board, as compared to Sahara, which had bid ₹2.35 crore for every BCCI match.
For the kit sponsorship, BCCI locked in Adidas which began its term from June this year till March 2028. The company is expected to pay ₹65 lakh for every match that India plays.
