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Reliance Industries Ltd, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, will stream the Indian Premier League cricket games for free.
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Viacom18 Media Pvt, a joint venture between Paramount Global and Reliance Industries, licensed the IPL streaming rights for $2.7 billion last year, fending off competitors Disney and Sony Group Corp.
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Viacom18 will offer the games for free to generate advertising sales, unlike Disney, who previously used the rights to drive subscribers to its streaming service, Disney Hotstar.
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Viacom18 executives have estimated that an audience in excess of 550 million will watch the weeks-long IPL games, which will boost the conglomerate’s technology and internet ambitions.
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The IPL tournament is described as the Super Bowl of cricket and the five-year contract gives Reliance a reach like no other to capitalize on.
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The cost of cricket rights soared last year as several media companies sought them to boost their nascent streaming businesses.
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Internet adoption is scaling at a rapid pace in India, and global and domestic media giants see the country as a catalyst to boost their subscriber bases.
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Ambani won the IPL rights by paying nearly three times what Disney had paid in the previous deal.
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Disney, which previously owned the IPL streaming rights, lost that auction but bagged TV broadcast rights after out-gunning Sony.
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Ambani bid for the IPL rights in conjunction with Paramount, billionaire James Murdoch, and Uday Shankar, the former head of Hotstar.