The BCCI has one of advertising’s most sought after properties on the market. But they are yet to finalise a title sponsor for India’s upcoming home matches, despite the August 13 bidding deadline passing. That is an awkward outcome for a property built on prestige. India’s home internationals offer live sport, national attention and an association with the country’s most powerful sporting brand. But the latest tender has put a number against that proposition, and the market has not rushed to accept it.
The BCCI is now understood to be speaking directly with potential sponsors including Google Gemini, Spinny and SBI Life after the formal bidding process failed to produce a deal. The new two-year rights cycle is expected to include around 35 chargeable international matches through March 2028. The reserve price has been reported at ₹4.75 crore per match by some reports, although other reports put it at ₹4.85 crore. Either way, it is above the ₹4.2 crore per-match rate paid by IDFC First Bank in the previous cycle.
So what exactly is holding the market back? Is the property too expensive? Are brands asking tougher questions before they put their money behind it?
“The market is telling you the reserve price is wrong. If you raise the floor 15%, cut the number of matches, shorten the contract, lock out whole categories, and then nobody bids, that isn’t a mystery. That’s supply and demand,” says Bhairav Shanth, Co Founder, ITW Universe.
The issue is not a sudden loss of appetite for Indian cricket, believes Shanth. It is the construction of the package itself. The previous cycle had a considerably larger number of matches, while the new tender is shorter and comes with a higher per-match expectation. The BCCI’s own tender document makes clear that its approximately 35-match estimate is not a guaranteed minimum. That makes a straight per-match comparison more complicated. A Test match and a T20I may both carry the Team India name, but they do not necessarily deliver the same audience or activation opportunity.
“A Friday T20 and a Tuesday Test are not the same asset. Averaging them into one ‘₹4.9 crore per match’ number is how you get an empty auction,” Shanth argues. In his view, the market is no longer willing to pay simply because the property has historically commanded a premium. “Brands aren’t ‘undervaluing cricket.’ They’re refusing to overpay for packaging from 2018.”
There is a second calculation behind that hesitation. The easy money that once chased association and visibility is harder to find, says Shanth. Fantasy sports, edtech and brands willing to spend heavily for stature has helped create a different sponsorship market. The brands still in the market are the ones willing to ‘do the math’.
That math, however, does not necessarily point to a weaker cricket market.
Cricket has an edge that money can’t buy
“Cricket has become a very expensive proposition today. The BCCI is a prime property and premiums that BCCI demands and commands are being viewed with a little bit of science,” says Harish Bijoor, Brand Guru and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
That application of ‘science’ is changing the pace of any decision. Rather than rushing to secure the property at the start of a cycle, brands can sit back, watch the market and see whether the asking price holds.
Bijoor sees the current situation as a form of brinkmanship, with brands willing to wait and watch rather than commit at the outset. Bijoor still sees Indian cricket as reasonably priced compared to major international sporting properties. But when pricing goes up, brands wait on the fringes, and every delay to an extent helps push down prices, he says. In his view, the behaviour marks a change in when brands choose to enter the conversation. Where brands once rushed in at the beginning, they may now prefer to wait until the end, when the possibility of negotiating a better price is stronger.
Sarthak Shah, CEO, Sportcell, also cautions against reading the delay as a verdict on cricket itself. “The delay says less about cricket’s pull and more about how sponsorship decisions get made today. Brands are sitting on budgets a little longer, partly geopolitical caution, partly a genuine shift towards proving ROI before signing, not after.”
Trust, Shah adds, is one of cricket’s strongest commercial advantages. A sponsorship can put a brand in front of millions, but its value only comes from the credibility and familiarity attached to the Indian team. Making cricket relevant and important for categories where consumer confidence matters, even as brands spread their spends across social conversations, activations and pure-reach platforms.
The larger business built around that trust and the attention is substantial. The BCCI’s bilateral media rights deal with JioStar runs through March 2028 and is worth ₹5,963 crore, underlining the value broadcasters continue to place on India’s home cricket calendar. But the value of the property for a rights-holder and the return for a sponsor are two different calculations. For a brand, the question is not simply how much the cricket ecosystem is worth, but how much of that value it can actually capture.
The cheque now has a new job
“The premium only makes sense if cricket beats those on cost per unit of changed behavior, not cost per impression, not mere ‘official partner’ status. More and more brands are taking the yardstick of performance.” says Shanth.
Brands today seek the ability to triangulate data from various sources and gauge how their sponsorship spending is impacting the behaviour of their customers or prospects. Shanth cites that a bank should be able to examine whether its cricket association influenced card transactions or app downloads. An AI platform could track whether an integration during a match led to an increase in usage. Sponsorship, in other words, has to give brands enough access and data to connect attention with behaviour.
However some experts still believe not every sponsorship has to be reduced to a last-click conversion. Cricket's brand-building power is precisely why marketers pay a premium in the first place. But yes, when the cost rises, the burden of explaining the investment naturally rises with it. Shashank Shekhar Mishra, Founder Director, Sports Konnect, states, “For a premium cricket property, the conversation has therefore moved beyond ‘How many people will see my brand?’ to ‘What incremental value will this partnership create?’” Reach still matters, he says, but it has to sit alongside content opportunities, digital integration, consumer insights and activation.There is a point beyond which additional reach does not necessarily translate into additional value for a brand, Mishra adds.
The answer, then, may lie in what happens around the match rather than only during it. The point is not to add more bells and whistles to a sponsorship package.If brands are being asked to pay a premium for cricket, a few seconds of visibility on the broadcast cannot be the full proposition. The sponsorship has to give them enough space to keep the conversation going once the live action ends.
Shah sees non-live rights as an important part of that equation. “The primary idea is to strike a balance between live cricket and adding on non-live rights so that that window of engagement is beyond the hours of live content,” he says. Shanth takes that argument further, pointing to the need for brands to build within the sport through players, clips, interactive experiences and commerce rather than simply attach a logo to it.
The alternative to cricket today is no longer another television property but an endless stream of content competing for attention. Cricket, hence, has to give brands more ways to use the attention it commands. “Heritage gets you a meeting. Product gets you the bid,” Shanth says. And that is exactly where the BCCI’s situation negotiation might be sitting perfectly.
