Heard that the top bid was closed to $3 billion and it's just for 4 years.
ICC must be feeling lovey dovey after the final numbers and I'm sure the ICC office will get some early fat checks too as a bonus.
Their reserve price was $1.44 billion for 4-year cycle (2024-27) and $4 billion for the 8-year cycle (2024-31). ICC went with the 4-year deal, since it was more lucrative for them. Exact amount being paid by Disney-Star is not known, but the ICC guys were saying that it is close to $3 billion. So much more than what they were initially expecting. And more importantly, this is just for the Indian market. Media rights auction for US-UK markets will happen next, followed by rest of Asia. Just hope that some of that amount will trickle down to the associate boards. ICC must be feeling lovey dovey after the final numbers and I'm sure the ICC office will get some early fat checks too as a bonus.
Now picture is more clear and it looks like ICC has achieved its target by organizing a close bid. Just look at the difference between winning bid and 2nd best bid. The difference is close to $2 Billion.
Disney is rich but they won't be much happy after seeing the massive difference and fell into FOMO trap, time will tell if they overpaid or not. That's why one needs a transparent process at auction.
I still don't think that Disney overpaid. I think that money is put into the right hands. But obviously, if there was good enough transparency in the auction I don't think Disney actually would have bid that much money. But obviously, Disney is a very big company and they wouldn't probably even bother too much about paying this much money. And I would say that ICC went for the right deal to go for 4 years.