‘Australia market dynamics is very different’ – Karan Taurani comments on Women’s Indian T20 League media rights deal comparisons with Women’s BBL

Earlier this week, the media rights of the Women’s Indian T20 League were sold for a whopping Rs 951 crores. The winning bidder also owns the digital rights to the Men’s Indian T20 League. Such an “incumbent” is the “best buyer” for Women’s Indian T20 League rights, feels media sector analyst, Mr. Karan Taurani.

In an insightful conversation with Sportskeeda’s Business of Sports, Mr. Taurani broke down the ‘TV or digital’ ad-spend dilemma, assessed media valuations of Indian sports properties, and identified upcoming trends of consolidation in digital media.

Further, he also talked about the likelihood of new-age sports increasing their share of the viewership pie, and the ‘gamification’ of OTT platforms like Netflix using Web 3.0 technologies like AR and VR.

Taurani said that TV continues to command better ROI for advertisers and brands, despite digital media showing accelerated growth.

“As far as Indian T20 League is concerned as a property, TV monetization is much more attractive as compared to digital monetization. If you look at the pure pay monetization, purely in terms of ad revenue on TV versus digital, I think we are talking about TV generating numbers of anywhere close to 2.5-3 times as compared to digital,” he said.

Talking about the Women’s Indian T20 League media-rights auction, Mr Taurani said, “We are still in very early days. Lot of women’s players or sportswomen are not recognized in a very big way. It’s always that eyeballs will follow advertising dollars.”

Australia market dynamics is very different: Karan Taurani

“So, right now for the first five years of Women’s Indian T20 League we are going to be in a phase wherein we are going to actually attract lots of eyeballs towards this kind of a property through efficient marketing and proper campaigning,” he added.

Talking about comparisons with Australia’s Women’s Big Bash League, Taurani said, “Australia market dynamics is very different…lot of other sports are there in [a] country like Australia whereas in a country like India, you are more limited to cricket, soccer and…2-3 [other] sports.”