Cricket Australia, the governing body for professional and amateur cricket in Australia, is reportedly exploring broadcasting partnership with Reliance Viacom Network as the organisation’s three-member team has arrived in Mumbai to assess and study the Indian market situation.
The meeting between the two parties is crucial as Reliance Viacom is expected to launch its sports channel in the coming months. Reports further suggested that the channel will be named Sports18.
Presently, Viacom’s OTA platform Voot and VH1, which had recently acquired the Badminton World Federation (BWF) media rights, live broadcasts all the matches and will now move to its sports channel.
As per reports, Reliance Viacom network executives are holding talks with the CA officials to explore media rights partnership for the next cycle. The deal between the two parties will also give Reliance Viacom the rights to men’s and women’s Big Bash League (BBL).
Notably, Sony Sports Network (SPN) currently holds the media rights of Cricket Australia’s however, the rights will have to be renewEd next year and in such a case, the CA’s executives are currently meeting almost every potential bidder in the Indian sports market. Earlier during the 2017-18 perios, SPN had bought the Australian cricket rights for six years.
Apart from Viacom Network, the CA team, headed by Nikki Linney, has also been meeting the representatives of other players like Star Network, Amazon Prime as well as Fan Code (Dream 11).
Significantly, Reliance Viacom Network has become a serious player in the sports broadcasting business in the recent times as they have already bagged media rights to famous properties like the FIFA World Cup, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue1, NBA, and the Abu Dhabi T10 cricket series.
After its entry, Reliance Viacom will be competing with the present players – Star Sports and Sony Sports Network and in the coming days, sports broadcasting is set to become a three-player market in India.