MUMBAI: All four cricket broadcasters - Disney, Viacom18, Sony and Zee - who participated in the e-auction for media rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) have written to the International Cricket Council (ICC), letting the governing body of the game know that the current tender document does not encourage them to submit a bid.
All four broadcasters have the same reasons for writing to the ICC - absolute lack of clarity on the process - and have indicated (not verbatim) that they may not turn up at the bidding table.
Ugliness, along with some potential for future litigation and quite a bit of antagonism enveloped the air this week after the ICC sent out a huge list of clarifications to the broadcasters, answering their questions in detail, but not making any major changes to the tender process.
"All four broadcasters have written to the ICC. We've been reading media reports on how Amazon wants to be in the fray too, which is fine. But there's no clue if Amazon is 'happy' with this process. If they are, even I'd love to know the whys and hows of what they're seeing here that we're missing. As far as we are concerned, it's clear - the current process doesn't encourage us to submit a bid," a leading broadcaster told TOI.
The tender process requires the broadcasters to submit a closed bid to bag rights for ICC's global events for the India markets. The ICC has invited bids for four as well as eight years, without explaining the metrics behind it or without determining how it will evaluate the bids.
"They've asked us to participate in a mock-auction this week (between 16th & 17th). We're yet to confirm the same, don't know about the others. What I can tell you is, we'll be watching this till the final hour," another broadcaster said.
BCCI secretary Jay Shah, also the India representative at the ICC's all-important Chief Executives Committee (CEC), has categorically requested the parent body to consider the e-auction process, simply for the reason that it guarantees transparency in the process.
"BCCI's decision to conduct the same of IPL rights through e-auction not just helped them with great price-discovery but also, and more importantly, ensured that all the bidders enjoyed a level-playing field. ICC's refusal to take this into consideration raises a lot of questions on the process. Even if they didn't want to consider an e-auction, what we can't understand is, why should the closed bids not be opened on the day of submissions, in front of all the bidders?
"Also, what are the metrics behind these four, and eight-year bids? There must be method being applied, right? I personally don't agree with them asking for an eight-year number, but even if some others find logic on it, on what basis will these rights be awarded?" says another leading broadcaster.
The bids have to be submitted in two parts: A) Technical; B) Financial.
"Now, once the technical bids have been submitted, shouldn't the financial bid be awarded to the party that presents the highest number? Technically, if everyone's qualified then it's only about the per-match number, right? And there again, there's an issue. What's the guarantee whose number is the highest if the bids are not being opened in front of everyone?" the broadcasters say.
Meanwhile, the ugliness in the air has a lot to do with silent murmurs doing the rounds about how the entire process - highly convoluted, as most see it - favours one potential bidder more than the rest, because of the eight-year option.
"Nobody will talk about it and it's understandable. But there are these underlying fears," industry executives say.
And to add to all this, the ICC has said that should it remain "unsatisfied" with the 'closed bids' that come in, it will call for an e-auction after 48 hours, without mentioning what will determine the terms of 'satisfaction'.
"Let's see what they have to say about the letters that have been written," broadcasters say.
As far as the ICC itself is concerned, the governing body - to be fair - met up with all potential broadcasters on multiple occasions in the run-up to the tender process and explained how it would be going about with the process, apropos of the changes that were being requested.
"Well, we can't do much if certain individuals or companies are still 'unconvinced'. There are a set of processes that we have identified, and we feel it's the best possible recourse for us, in terms of deriving optimum value. Can't help much, except that we're open to taking all questions, as much as possible," say those who've worked with the ICC to bring out this tender.
TOI had reported earlier, how, the reasons for ICC asking for an eight-year bid has more 'political connotations' to the process than business.
