Disney Star, which had sub-licensed television rights for the 2024-27 ICC tournaments to Zee for $1.5 billion in August 2022, may now have to broadcast the events on its channels, in the absence of a closure of the deal, top media sources have told FE.
Persons in the know say Zee has not sold sponsorships for any of the key tournaments this year, which includes the Under-19 Cricket World Cup that kicks off on January 19 in South Africa or the ICC T20 World Cup which will be held in June in the West Indies and US.
Disney Star declined to comment on the issue when contacted. A mail sent to Zee elicited no response till the time of going to press.
While Disney Star has not released its advertising packages for the Under-19 Cricket World Cup yet, it is likely to do so in the coming days, media industry sources said. The broadcaster may begin presentations to advertisers and agencies for the T20 World Cup by March-April this year.
The Walt Disney Company last month had signed a non-binding agreement with Reliance Industries (RIL) to merge its Indian unit Disney Star with Viacom18. Zee, on the other hand, is in the midst of “good-faith negotiations” to extend its proposed $10-billion merger with Sony. This grace period is for a month only, Bloomberg had reported last week.
Media industry experts say that while both combines (Zee-Sony and Disney-RIL) would be keen to have the ICC TV media rights in their fold, the issue may impact overall valuations. This is because advertising growth on TV has been weak for a few quarters now, at only about 3-4%, according to experts.
“Being able to monetise TV media rights is not easy amid weak advertising growth. Most broadcasters realise this. At the same time, linear TV in India has been stable in terms of viewership as was visible during the ODI Cricket World Cup in October-November last year. Not only did digital viewership grow, but so did TV viewership,” Karan Taurani, senior vice-president, research at Mumbai-based brokerage Elara Capital, said.
On Tuesday, Star Sports, which is part of Disney Star, said the TV broadcast of the Indian Premier (IPL) auction for the 2024 edition, which was held on December 19 in Dubai, had equalled the highest viewership for any ‘mini’ auction held so far.
Disney Star has the TV rightsof the IPL for the 2023-27 cycle, while Viacom18 has the digital rights of the T20 tournament for the same period.
The auction, which lasted over six hours, had a watch time of 0.92 billion minutes, which was a 57% growth over the event held a year ago, Star Sports said. The live auction was watched by 22.8 million viewers, which was 29% higher than last year, the broadcaster said.
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