'BCCI Inc' among India's top 200 firms

If it were a corporate entity, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) would have been among the country's top 170 companies in terms of revenues (2007) "" much larger than Zee Entertainment (Rs 1,515.88 crore) for which promoter Subhash Chandra is waging a bitter battle against the official cricket board to develop 20:20 cricket in India.

In fact, BCCI would also surpass FMCG company Colgate Palmolive (Rs 1,290.70 crore), consumer durables giant Whirlpool of India (Rs 1,476 crore) and pharma major Glaxo SmithKline (Rs 1,565.85 crore).

All this is courtesy the Rs 1,621 crore revenues that the country's richest sports body will be raking in every year for the next three years just by selling broadcast rights, domestic 20:20 cricket teams, and team sponsorship rights amongst others. 
 

ON A STRONG WICKET
Rights sold	Total  contract	Annual  value
Broadcast rights to Nimbus (2006-2010)	2191	547.75
Team sponsor deal to Sahara (2006-2010)	280	70
Team kit sponsor deal with Nike (2006-10)	196.99	49.24
Broadcast rights in non-ICC countries to Nimbus (2006-11)	876.6	175.32
IPL broadcast rights to Sony (fm 2008 for ten years)	4104	410.4
IPL team rights deal (fm 2008 for ten years)	2892	289
Others(incl IP, team sponsors ground,team auction etc	80	""
(Figures in Rs crore)

To put it another way, BCCI will earn Rs 4.43 crore everyday for the next three years "" irrespective of whether cricket matches are being played or not in some venue in India.

The revenues will only go up with a bevy of rights coming up for re-bidding in 2010. These include the broadcast rights for domestic international matches, the team sponsorship deal (currently with Sahara) and the team kit contract (currently with Nike).

The big revenue earners come from selling broadcast rights for cricket matches in a cricket-crazy country. These include broadcasting revenues from international cricket matches within India and from neutral venues in non-ICC countries that have been bagged by Nimbus.

BCCI has also sold the TV rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) to a consortium led by Sony TV. These two mega-contracts account for over 70 per cent of the board's revenues.

To understand this hyper-growth consider that BCCI's 2005-06 revenue was Rs 430 crore and 2006-07 revenue Rs 650 crore. The major growth will now come from the lucrative new revenue stream opened up by the IPL 20:20 tournament.

In the last few weeks the sports body, for instance, has raked in Rs 6996 crore from selling the broadcasting and the team franchising rights of IPL for the next ten years.

Or to put it another way, with 128 players in eight teams slugging it out for the 20:20 tournament from April 18 this year, the sports body has already made over Rs 5.4 crore from each player "" and this without the teams even having been selected.

The eight teams (each will have 16 players) will be slugging it out for the IPL 20:20 tournament, playing over 59 matches.