A bit of recent Facebook news is the latest piece of evidence that the social giant is taking its pledge to build a competitive lineup of digital content very seriously. According to Recode, Facebook bit $600 million for the rights to broadcast and stream cricket matches from the Indian Premier League (IPL), though it ultimately lost out to a larger bid from South Asian media company Star India.
The package Facebook bid for reportedly included the rights to the two-month long IPL, which is one of the most-watched sports leagues in the world. Recode, citing a since-deleted tweet from the IPL, noted that Facebook was the only Silicon Valley bidder involved in the process.
There are a few conclusions that can be drawn by Facebook’s swing for the fences (or the boundaries, as cricket fans would say), but the main one concerns the degree to which the bidding war for sports league streaming rights is heating up. Earlier this year, several major US tech companies competed for the right to stream the NFL’s Thursday Night Football set, with Amazon ultimately taking home the grand prize. The final price tag on that deal was reported at $50 million, which Facebook’s $600 million IPL bid dwarfs. Sure, the latter company was also looking to pick up broadcast rights, and the IPL deal carries a larger complement of games than the TNF slate, but the size of Facebook’s offer still underscores how much attention sports streaming rights draw.
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On a secondary level, Facebook also recognized that India, where tech companies like YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix have appealed to consumers, is a valuable online video frontier. When YouTube launched an app to help Indian users manage their data, it specifically cited cricket streams as one of the nation’s most popular categories.
Of course, streaming video players still have a ways to go before they can match the pockets of traditional media companies. As big as Facebook’s bid was, it still paled in comparison to the reported $2.6 billion Star India paid to win the IPL deal.
