Yeah, they sub-licensed rights to the Zee. I guess they already had some back-door talks with the Zee before the auction took place and now looks a good deal. Having said that considering 2nd,3rd, 4th bidding everyone would still say that Disney overpaid.
Some could also argue that Disney played their cards rights and didn't go along with other broadcaster agenda, which was to take auction to e-auction.
The intention from Reliance and others was to take it to the second round (e-auction). In order to avoid it, Disney-Star had to make sure that there is more than 10% difference with the second ranking bid. And IMO, I don't think that they overpaid by much. If the 5-year IPL bid can go for $6 billion, then I don't think that $3-4 billion for 4-year ICC deal is overrated. ICC tournaments have their own aura, and people like me hardly watch IPL nowadays. IPL is getting repetitive and too lengthy. ICC tournaments have the "fresh" feeling and their duration is optimal. Some could also argue that Disney played their cards rights and didn't go along with other broadcaster agenda, which was to take auction to e-auction.
Because at the end of the day they paid way too much if we are considering only a 10% threshold limit.
When we look at the difference between the first bid and the second bid, it is easy to see that there is a huge difference between the two bids. There was no way anyone could have expected this much of a difference. And that is always going to be in the back of their minds. There is no doubt in my mind that they will feel the loss of 1.7 billion dollars. However, they cannot change what has already been done. From now on, they should try to optimize the outcome of the project in order to achieve the best results.