Amazon to pull out of IPL media rights race leaving the arena to Reliance Industries
Amazon.com Inc. is planning to withdraw from a heated competition for the rights to stream Indian Premier League cricket matches, according to people familiar with the matter, ceding one of the world’s most popular sporting contests to rivals from Walt Disney Co. to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd, according to Bloomberg.
The IPL rights had been estimated to fetch an unprecedented $7.7 billion.
The US giant is planning to throw in the towel rather than get into a bidding war, the people said, to Bloomberg asking not to be identified as discussing internal deliberations.
While Amazon has already invested more than $6 billion in the country, more spending merely for the online streaming rights to the league didn’t make business sense, said sources, the report added.
Amazon has already entered the sports streaming league and holds the rights for English Premier League.
Reliance, through Viacom18, has made its foray into sports broadcast with the recent launch of the Sports18 TV channel.
