ESPN-Start Sports (ESS) has secured Global Commercial rights for the Champions League Twenty20 tournament till 2017, for $975 Million. The first tournament is going to be held forhich has to be held between December 3rd and 10th 2008. $75 million is goig to be spent on marketing the tournament. ESS outbid the Dubai Investment Council (bid $751.3 million), the Abu Dhabi Sports Club (disqualified for a conditional bid). While this is less than the $1.02 billion that Sony bid for the IPL rights for 10 years, the Champions League features fewer matches. The cost per bid is thus higher, details of which are at Business Standard. Sony raked in the moolah - around Rs. 300 crores - from the IPL, but one shouldn’t also forget the disaster that the World Cup in West Indies was for advertisers and Sony, after India crashed out early.
Readers will recall that the IPL was believed to have sliced rights for the IPL tournament in multiple ways - separate rights for the official portal, mobile content and online streaming. Rights were also split across geographies. We’ve written to ESPN Star Sports for more details on whether the deal includes Digital Media rights as well.
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Zee Group promoted ICL has set aside $102 Million for marketing two properties - the ICL 20s Challenge, to be held between October 10th and November 16th, and a World Series between 20th and 28th of November, reports IndianTelevision. The ICL has tied up with Games2Win and Contests2Win for casual games. And this is weird - according to the story, ICL will be using Games2Wins Orkut app “Slapster”. Slapster is an app that allows users to virtually slap others…appears to be on the lines on Poke and Superpoke on Facebook. So you’ll knock your friends out with an ICL Cricket Bat? :S
