Furious television broadcasters are threatening to walk out of the bidding for the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) media rights after the governing body-appointed auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), pulled out of the process midway.
PwC’s decision to bow out, and the broadcasters’ threat to pull out, are the latest episodes in a saga that is beginning to resemble a shambles for the ICC, in sharp contrast to the smooth rollout of media rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) by The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in June.
All four broadcasters – Viacom18, Disney Star, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL) and Sony Pictures Networks India (SPNI) – have independently written to ICC saying they will boycott the bidding if the process is not transparent, people aware of the development told News18. They have also assailed the ICC for being mealy-mouthed about explaining the departure of PwC in the middle of the process.
ICC Looking To Sell Media Rights; Separate Sell Off for Men’s, Women’s Games
In his missive, Anil Jayaraj, the CEO of Viacom18 Sports, has told ICC that it must abandon the plan for a closed auction in the initial stage and instead opt for a transparent e-auction as the sole process for the bid.
“PWC opting out of the bid process at this late stage, only re-affirms the material concerns that we have had all along on the auction process and have raised it with the ICC on several occasions in the last few days. These developments are casting a cloud over the entire bid process which should be avoided," says Jayaraj’s letter to the ICC.
At the time of publishing this report, News18 was reaching out to the other three broadcasters for a comment.
ICC, in an official comment as reported by Cricbuzz, said “PWC was contracted to support the ICC’s media rights sales process in two phases. Firstly, providing background checks as part of the due diligence on all bids is ongoing. The second element was to act as an independent third party to hold the financial bids securely between submission and opening. Recent clarifications to bidders confirmed that bids can be submitted and opened simultaneously meaning PWC’s services were no longer required to securely hold financial bids. PWC continue to support the process in other respects."
The four broadcasters, who recently fought hard during the IPL media rights, have already picked up the tender documents and were the ones who put pressure on the ICC to reduce “opaqueness" in the process. There were a few factors, including the absence of reserve price, and opaqueness regarding the conduct of Round 2 (e-auction), which made the broadcasters fume.
ICC Decides to Issue Some Clarity on Sales of Media Rights After Pressure From Broadcasters
Even though the ICC sent out a clarification, the planned mock auction where the broadcasters were supposed to understand the technicalities did not take place after the bidders refused to be a part of it.
All technical bids had to be submitted to the ICC on August 22, while August 26 is when the financial bids will be handed over to the governing body. According to sources, the bids were to be submitted at the PWC’s UK office, but now the process will take place in Dubai at the ICC headquarters.
The ICC has set a benchmark price for all the event matches, which will be hosted in India, at US $1.44 billion for a four-year cycle. The governing body has said it will apply the unique ‘2.8 multiplier formula’ to the eight-year cycle, which will eventually come to around US $4 billion.
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