One97 Communications owned Paytm has purchased the rights for title sponsorship from the BCCI for all home series to be played in India till 2019, reports NDTV. Paytm will pay Rs 2.42 crore per international match hosted in the country, of which 84 matches are already scheduled. This comes to around Rs 203.28 crore, without counting any matches that might be scheduled in the future. .@Paytm gets title sponsorship rights for India home series for 4 years. Winning bid was at a price of INR 203.28 Cr pic.twitter.com/ie4yhaLFFp — BCCI (@BCCI) July 30, 2015 Note that this is BCCI’s first partnership with a digital company for sponsorship. Previously, smartphone maker Micromax held the rights for a year, after STAR group and Sahara held the rights in the preceding years. These sponsorship rights do not include rights to the IPL tournament and are exclusive to international (test, ODI and T20) matches played in the country. Interestingly, according to this Hindu report, the Ranji trophy will now be known as Paytm Ranji trophy. The sponsorship rights include, “sponsor branding of the relevant series with the title sponsor logo, official designation as the ‘Title Sponsor’ of the relevant international or domestic Series, visibility at the stadium during both international and domestic matches, broadcast sponsorship rights, and a host of other rights." Basically, Paytm will be able to advertise itself on player t-shirts, on the boundary rope, cricket grounds and hoardings near the boundary etc. Paytm funding: In February this year, Chinese e-commerce major Alibaba Group’s affiliate…
