Cricket Australia’s team exploring broadcasting partnership with Reliance Viacom and others

Cricket Australia Broadcasting Rights – Reliance Viacom Sports Channel: Just ahead of the IPL Media Rights tender, Reliance Viacom is turning out to be very serious sports broadcasting player. As reported earlier by InsideSport, Reliance Viacom Sports Channel will be launched on 15th April. The channel executives are meeting Cricket Australia officials and others to explore Media Rights Partnership for the next cycle.

A 3 member team of Cricket Australia (CA) is in Mumbai to assess the market ahead of their rights renewal next year. According to available information, CA officials met Reliance Viacom executives on Monday.

It is worth noting that Sony Sports Network is the current rights holder of Cricket Australia’s portfolio. But CA’s executives currently are meeting almost every potential bidder in the Indian sports market.

The CA officials have alreay met FanCode (Dream11), Star, Amazon Prime representatives.

Reliance is getting ready with commercial launch of sports channel on April 15.

As per the patent filing, the channel has been named Sports18.

It will be a part of Reliance’s Network18 group which is the majority shareholder of Viacom that recently acquired FIFA World Cup broadcasting right.

The JV of Reliance & Viacom in last 12 months have acquired media rights of LaLiga, FIFA World Cup 2022, Serie A and French Ligue 1.

Currently, Viacom’s OTA platform Voot and VH1 live telecast the matches. Now, it will also move to Sports18. The platform also recently acquired Badminton World Federation Rights.

Some of the DTH providers have also come out with the PACKAGE RATES for the channel. InsideSport could not independently verify the reports.

As per reports, the channel will go live on all major DTH and cable providers on April 15 with Sports18 1, Sports18 1 HD, Sports18 2, Sports18 2 HD besides Hindi channel Khel18. The market which had become a duopoly between Star and Sony will now be a three-horse race. Inside Sport