Erosion of Ranji Trophy’s value is indicative of Star Sports and BCCI’s disregard

Last Thursday, an unlikely cricketer caused a minor flutter on social media. It was the first day of the quarterfinals of the Ranji Trophy, India’s premier domestic cricket tournament. Vinay Kumar, the captain of Karnataka and a veteran of several seasons in the knockout stages of the tournament and even winning it twice, had taken a hat-trick to leave arch-rivals Mumbai in shambles. There was euphoric whooping from the Karnataka faithful, but just as noticeable were the frustrated queries of cricket fans who had hurried to the nearest television set – arre bhai, kahaan dekh rahe ho? Several, including at least one sports journalist, could not find the broadcast on their television sets.

Eventually, news came through that the match was on TV, but not on any of the Star network channels where they were expecting to find it. It was on Star Sports First, a channel that was not available on some of the major DTH platforms. By then, most people realised that the match was also being streamed on Hotstar, the online streaming platform run by the Star network.

When Star acquired the television and digital rights to Indian cricket in 2012, the Ranji Trophy had been bleeding from a thousand cuts – a packed international calendar, placid surfaces, a format that encouraged attritional play, and most of all, the apathy of administrators who did not seem the least bit troubled even when a crowd favourite like Virender Sehwag bowed out of the game before empty stands. For Rs 3851 crores, Star received a package that included the rights to broadcast all international cricket in India, the Ranji Trophy, and the Irani Cup. The deal also included “internet and mobile rights”.

Fans who remained loyal to the Ranji Trophy would have hoped that the experienced sports broadcaster would infuse new life into the tournament with publicity for marquee clashes, compelling highlights packages, elite commentators, and incisive player interviews.

They were wrong.

How the next cycle of rights should be licensed

Nothing remains of that dream of a Ranji revival today, in the last few months of that rights period. In the group stages of the tournament this year, when there were often 12 games happening simultaneously, none were being shown on TV.

When matches were streamed on Hotstar (never more than two at a time), their production was quite obviously inferior to the quality that fans were used to experiencing in the broadcasts of international cricket matches. It has become painfully obvious that Star’s acquisition of these rights was not enough to guarantee the best outcome for Indian cricket.

In the months leading up to the next auction, the custodians of sport need to ask what else they could have done, and how the next cycle of rights should be licensed.

India’s telecom regulator places “rollout obligations” on telecom operators when spectrum is auctioned. Under the mines and minerals law, a mining company cannot abandon or temporarily close a mine without the government’s permission. These conditions are sensible because both spectrum and mineral resources are publicly owned. The Supreme Court’s popular intervention in the governance of cricket seems to suggest that the sport has acquired a similar public character.

As the custodians of this public good, the BCCI should insist that media organisations who acquire the rights to broadcast cricket meet a set of obligations, such as an obligation to sub-licence (in a convenient and transparent manner), those rights that they are not keen on using. Had such an obligation been in place for the current cycle of rights, Star would have been obliged to offer to sub-license the rights to those Ranji Trophy games that it was not keen on broadcasting on television or over the internet.

Given the pessimism that Star’s CEO has expressed even about Test cricket, the BCCI may even want to insist that all Test matches be televised. When Afghanistan debut against India in that format next year, the BCCI may not want purely business considerations to determine whether the match is televised.

Unfulfilled demand

The BCCI, however, need not rely only on any lofty conceptions about cricket’s value to the public to place such obligations on the broadcaster. The existence of unfulfilled demand, an inefficient outcome, provides a market-based rationale.

To illustrate crudely, Star may have good business reasons to not televise or stream a Ranji match between Kerala and Vidarbha (that it owns the exclusive rights to stream), but for at least some fans, watching a stream composed of footage from smartphones set up at opposite ends of the ground, is a better outcome than no stream at all.

The fans are denied this opportunity because Star, having acquired the exclusive rights to those matches, has the right to compel the BCCI to not permit the production of such a stream. This unfulfilled demand should be enough to raise a red flag with India’s competition regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

In fact, the subject of exclusive media rights has come up before the CCI once before. In 2007, shortly after the franchise-based twenty-twenty cricket league was conceived, a consortium of World Sports Group and Sony placed a bid that won them the rights to telecast the Indian Premier League for ten years.

Following a complaint, a report by the Director General (the regulator’s prosecutorial arm) observed that the sale of exclusive rights for a period of ten years would foreclose competition in the market. The winner of those rights, the DG argued, would have a significant advantage over any rivals by the time the rights came up for auction again.

One of the members of the Competition Commission agreed with the DG and concluded that the grant of rights for such a long duration amounted to an abuse by the BCCI of its dominant position. That member was in the minority and this line of reasoning was not a significant ground in the CCI’s findings (in its 2013 order that was set aside by the appellate tribunal and in its order from just a couple of weeks ago), that the BCCI had abused its dominant position in the market.

Even so, the BCCI seem to have heeded the warning present in the DG’s observations and in the minority opinion. When the IPL rights were auctioned once again in September this year, they were limited to a five-year period, down from the ten years for which they were auctioned in 2007.

Exclusive rights for sports broadcast globally

Exclusive rights to broadcast sports have also attracted the attention of European competition regulators and the most significant decision remains that of the European Commission in 2003, in relation to the UEFA Champions League.

The Commission found that the sale in a single bundle of pay TV and free TV rights on an exclusive basis to a single broadcaster for each territory and for several years in a row, was likely to restrict competition in the market.

Since the Commission acknowledged that exclusivity had several benefits in sports broadcasting, it suggested that the negative effects of such exclusivity on competition in the market be contained. It suggested a few steps including the grant of rights for a maximum period of three years, breaking the rights down into smaller packages so that different broadcasters, including financially weaker ones, could access them, and the establishment of a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory sub-licensing system.

UEFA then submitted a revised proposal under which the rights were split into several individual packages that would be sold separately, and where the maximum duration of those rights was three years.

Some of these terms are now quite standard across European sport. The rights to broadcast the English Premier League on pay TV and on free TV (mainly highlights packages) are auctioned separately. No pay TV company is permitted to win the auction for both packages.

In 2016, the German League Association and the German Football League promised the German cartel regulator that no single pay-TV buyer could win exclusive live broadcasting rights to Bundesliga league games for the 2017-18 to the 2020-21 seasons.

The European Commission in its 2009 Broadcasting Communication, said that the buyers of premium rights should offer unused rights to third parties through a transparent system of sub-licensing. The European Broadcasting Union, a European alliance of public service media entities, has even published a set of rules for its members to follow when sub-licensing their rights to broadcast sports programmes to broadcasters who are not members.

Even though they were limited to a five-year period, the broadcast and digital rights for the IPL were acquired entirely by Star who are under no obligation to sub-license them. The deal does not meet European standards. After it acquired the rights to Indian cricket in 2012, Star had acquired in 2015, the global broadcast rights for all ICC events (the 50 and 20-over World Cups and the Champions Trophy) up to 2023.

In the days preceding the IPL auction, the chairman of Dish TV wrote to the Competition Commission and the BCCI fearing Star’s monopoly over cricket broadcast rights. Star will come across its “final frontier” when the rights to broadcast Indian cricket will come up for auction once again in the early months of 2018.

As the custodian of the game in India however, the BCCI should act to limit Star’s immense clout over the sport. It must ensure not only that those rights are sold in smaller packages, but also that Star (or any other media organisation) is not permitted to acquire all of them. The BCCI could, for instance, create separate packages for twenty-twenty internationals, one-day internationals, Test matches, Ranji Trophy, and other domestic cricket matches, and stipulate that no organisation can acquire more than three of those packages.

In limiting the rights to a shorter duration, the BCCI should consider that the European standard is now three years. It should also place an obligation on the acquirers of those rights to sub-license any rights that they do not intend to use. If the BCCI does not take these steps, then the market should be the subject of a Competition Commission investigation. And only then perhaps should we start hoping for a television-led revival of the Ranji Trophy.

Aju John is the head of content at myLaw.