About 20 companies including Amazon Seller Services — the e-commerce entity of Amazon Inc — Reliance Jio Digital Services, Twitter, Facebook, ESPN Digital Media (India), WPP’s media planning agency GroupM, Yupp TV and Discovery, besides both the broadcasters — Star India and Sony Pictures Networks — have bought the bidding document for the media rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL), according to sources close to the sports body Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). BCCI has fixed August 28 as the last date for submission of the bids. Tenders will be opened on the same day. This time, instead of a 10-year period, the media rights for the sports tourney will be given for five years, from 2018-2022.

Sources explained that media rights for television and digital are being auctioned separately as far as India is concerned, while in case of international markets like the US and Europe, the rights have been clubbed together.

While television viewers get to watch IPL matches live, the feed is delayed by five minutes on the OTT platform Hotstar. Sony Pictures earned an advertising revenue of about Rs 1,300 crore for the ninth edition of IPL this year, while Star India’s video over-the-top (OTT) Hotstar made close to Rs 150 crore.

The 10-year deal with Sony, which had earlier bagged the television broadcast rights, expired at the end of the ninth season of IPL. Similarly, the contract with Star India’s subsidiary Novi Digital, which runs Hotstar, ended after the ninth edition of the IPL, this year.

In 2008, Singapore-based World Sports Group (WSG) had won the television broadcast rights for a period of 10 years after agreeing to pay $918 million through an auction. The company had further inked a deal with Sony Pictures Networks (earlier Multi Screen Media), making Sony the official broadcaster. However, a year later in 2009, BCCI discarded its contract with WSG, directly transferring the rights to Sony, calling the later the rightful owner of the media rights. The contract was redone with Sony Pictures agreeing to pay $1.63 billion for nine years.

Star India, the broadcaster in 2015, won the digital telecast rights including mobile for Rs 302.2 crore by defeating its rival Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures had bade an amount of Rs 285 crore.