Sports
MPA sounds the alarm: the IPL’s $5.4bn rights party is over and the hangover starts in 2028
A new report finds the 2028-32 media rights cycle will flatline at $5.4bn, franchise losses are mounting and the merger that created JioHotstar has killed the competition that drove prices up
MUMBAI: The party lasted twenty years. Now comes the hangover. The Indian Premier League’s media rights, which grew six-fold since the first auction in 2008 to reach $5.4bn in the current 2023-27 cycle, are hitting a structural ceiling. The next rights auction, for the 2028-32 period, will fetch exactly the same number in total but deliver 13 per cent less per match, as an expanded 94-game format adds volume without adding value. Two decades of compounding growth, in short, are over.
That is the central finding of a report published on Monday by Media Partners Asia (MPA), entitled The IPL: Teams, Rights and Valuations. It is a forensic, and at times uncomfortable, read for anyone with money in the game.
The arithmetic of the current cycle is already painful. Rights holders are staring at cumulative losses of $1.8-2.0bn across the 2023-27 period. Total advertising revenue grew at just 7 per cent compound annual growth over the last three seasons, a sharp deceleration from the 18 per cent of the prior cycle. The culprits are familiar: policy-driven exits by ed-tech and real-money gaming companies, a BCCI ban on crypto advertising and a narrowed advertiser base that new sectors such as AI have not yet come close to replacing. Global macro headwinds are not helping either.
The structural story, though, runs deeper than a bad advertising cycle. The near-threefold jump in rights values seen at the 2023-27 auction was driven by fierce competition between Viacom18 and Disney. That competition no longer exists. The merger that created JioHotstar has eliminated the primary source of bidding tension, and with it, any realistic prospect of another auction war. MPA is blunt about what this means: the dynamic that supercharged rights values cannot be repeated.
“The IPL has created extraordinary value over two decades, but the conditions that drove that growth are now shifting in ways that are structurally consequential,” said Mihir Shah, vice president, India, at Media Partners Asia. “The rights reset in 2028 will not be a correction to be absorbed and forgotten. It marks the beginning of a period in which franchise value creation depends on building the non-media revenue base, focusing on sponsorship, international presence and digital monetisation.”
The warning to investors is pointed. Media rights now account for 75 per cent of total franchise revenues, up from 48 per cent in 2017. EBITDA margins have expanded from an average of 10 per cent in the first cycle to 34 per cent today, but that operating leverage, MPA notes, cuts both ways. When rights values correct, the pain is amplified. Non-media revenues are growing at 22 per cent compound annual growth since the pandemic, but from a low base that offers little cushion in the near term.
Against this backdrop, franchise owners are moving. Stake sales are accelerating, and MPA believes franchises are advancing liquidity plans precisely because they can see what is coming in 2028. Shah’s message to those pricing franchises at current multiples is direct: “Owners and investors who are pricing franchises today on current EBITDA multiples need to factor in both the rights cycle headwind and the concentration risk it implies. The window at current multiples may be shorter than the market assumes.”
MPA’s franchise scorecard, which assesses all ten IPL teams across championship wins, playoff appearances, social media following and international presence, places Mumbai Indians first with 360 out of 400 points and Chennai Super Kings second with 320. Royal Challengers Bengaluru ranks fourth, its enormous social media presence, anchored by Virat Kohli’s 274 million individual following, undermined by a single championship title across 18 seasons, no international franchise presence and dangerous dependence on one icon player. Punjab Kings and Lucknow Super Giants prop up the table at 90 and 100 points respectively.
The digital picture adds a further layer of irony. JioHotstar recently broke 70 million concurrent users during the ICC T20 World Cup final. Audience scale has never been greater. Yet that scale has not translated into the monetisation needed to justify current rights pricing. The structural gap between what streaming costs and what streaming earns remains, MPA says, the single biggest constraint on 2028 valuations.
Seventy million people watching at once and the economics still do not work. That, more than any other number in the report, tells you everything about where the IPL’s next chapter is headed.
Sports
Asia’s sports media confab pitches its tent in Singapore
Sportel Asia returns with rights deals, piracy battles and a search for the holy grail of personalisation — all before the after-work drinks
SINGAPORE: The world’s sports-media deal-makers are descending on the Lion City this week, briefcases and business cards at the ready, for Sportel Asia 2026. Two packed days at the Orchard Grand Ballroom — 24 and 25 March — promise a collision of rights-holders, broadcasters, streaming platforms and tech vendors, all hustling for a slice of the most-watched, most-fought-over content on the planet. Think of it as a transfer window, but for television.
The conference, organised by Monaco Mediax, has made Singapore its home for the Asia-Pacific edition of Sportel — its glitzier sibling being the Monaco gathering each autumn. This year’s programme leans hard into the commercial tug-of-war between legacy broadcasters and the streaming insurgents eating their lunch, with a side-order of piracy panic and a dash of feminist economics.
The curtain-raiser on Tuesday morning is a masterclass on sports media rights in Asia — landscape, challenges and what comes next. With rights fees spiralling, streaming platforms multiplying and audiences fragmenting faster than a dropped smartphone, the question of who pays what for which rights has never been thornier. The session, one of several branded as masterclasses to lend proceedings an appropriately educational air, sets the intellectual tone for two days of vigorous back-scratching.
Hot on its heels comes a presentation from the Korea Professional Football League on how it is showcasing the K League through media and content strategy. Beyond the pitch, as the session title rather poetically has it. Korean football has punched well above its weight culturally — its clubs would like to do the same commercially, and the APAC broadcasting market is the obvious first port of call.
After the obligatory coffee break — networking, in conference-speak — attention turns to the rather clinical-sounding matter of content fabric. A presentation on its real value for sports rights holders will either illuminate or baffle, depending on one’s tolerance for infrastructure jargon. The gist: in a world where content must travel seamlessly from stadium to screen in multiple formats across multiple platforms, the plumbing matters.
Tuesday’s afternoon centrepiece may well be the masterclass on European football’s commercial push into APAC. The session, cheekily titled “Away goals,” will examine how the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and their continental cousins are chasing Asian fans and, more to the point, Asian money. Broadcast deals, sponsorship, fan engagement, youth academies — there is no trick too small when the prize is 4.5 billion potential followers.
A technology masterclass on making sense of new trends follows, which in sports-media terms means artificial intelligence, augmented reality, automated production and whatever acronym the industry has invented in the past fortnight. That leads into what may be the most entertainingly titled session of the week: “What the buyers want! Content acquisition in APAC: a Q&A.” Day one closes with after-work drinks — because no amount of disruption, digital transformation or dynamic rights packaging cannot be improved by a cold beer.
Tuesday 24 March — programme at a glance
08:30 Exhibition opens & welcome coffee
09:45 MasterClass: Sports media rights in Asia
10:35 Presentation: K League media & content strategy
11:20 Presentation: The real value of content fabric for rights holders
11:45 MasterClass: Women leading sport in Singapore — legacy & economic power
14:00 MasterClass: Away goals — European football & APAC commercial growth
15:50 MasterClass: Technology — making sense of new trends
16:45 Session: What the buyers want — content acquisition in APAC
17:30 After-work drinks
Wednesday opens with a session that could prove the week’s most consequential: the booming sports media and technology landscape of Australia and New Zealand. The ANZ market has become a battleground between free-to-air incumbents, pay-TV holdouts and streaming newcomers, all fighting over rugby, cricket and Australian rules football with a fervour that makes the European super-league saga look like a friendly disagreement.
Then comes a presentation from FeedConstruct, a data and streaming infrastructure company, on its journey and where clients fit into it — corporate storytelling of the kind that keeps exhibitor halls financially viable. After lunch, the masterclass on streaming and the holy grail of personalisation tackles the central obsession of every platform executive: how to serve each viewer exactly what they want, the moment they want it, without haemorrhaging money in the attempt. The answer, spoiler alert, remains elusive.
Wednesday’s undoubted crowd-pleaser is the masterclass on streaming piracy in Asia, tartly subtitled “from illegal streams to cybercrime.” The region remains the world’s most enthusiastic market for pirated sports content, with illegal IPTV services, torrent streams and password-sharing operations costing rights-holders hundreds of millions of dollars each year. The session’s inclusion speaks to how seriously the industry now takes what was once dismissed as a niche law-enforcement matter. It is not. It is an existential threat to the economics of sports broadcasting.
The week closes with the Pitch Perfect Innovation Contest — a startup showcase where fledgling companies compete to impress an audience of potential investors and clients in the best Dragons’ Den tradition. The winner gets celebrated with drinks, which may be the most civilised prize in the business-events calendar. Everyone else gets a business card and a flight home.
Also tucked into Wednesday’s programme is an exploration of women’s sport and the economic power it increasingly commands — a subject that, a decade ago, would have warranted a footnote. Today, with women’s football, cricket and basketball smashing broadcast records across the Asia-Pacific, it commands a masterclass of its own. Progress, of a sort.
Wednesday 25 March — programme at a glance
08:30 Exhibition opens & welcome coffee
10:00 MasterClass: Australia & New Zealand — booming sports media & tech landscape
11:20 Presentation: Beyond FeedConstruct — journey & partnership
11:45 MasterClass: From illegal streams to cybercrime — tackling streaming piracy in Asia
14:00 MasterClass: Streaming and the holy grail of personalisation
14:50 Session: Pitch Perfect Innovation Contest
16:00 After-work drinks in honour of the Pitch Perfect winner
17:00 Exhibition closes
Between sessions, the real business happens on the exhibition floor — handshakes, hushed conversations about rights packages, and the kind of deal-making that never makes it into a press release. Sportel has always understood that the conference is the pretext; the corridor is the point.
The event is organised by Monaco Mediax. Registration and further details are available at sportelasia.com. Sportel Monaco 2026 follows in the autumn, for those whose appetite for sports-media deal-making is not yet sated. In this industry, it rarely is.
