The Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) has announced that Star India has bagged the Indian Premier League (IPL) television and digital rights for a whopping US$ 2.55 billion (INR 16,347.5 crore) from 2018-2022.

There were a total of seven categories up for grabs: television rights for India, digital rights for India and rights for the USA, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the rest of the world.

A total of 24 firms had bought the tender documents though only 14 of them had bid for the rights.

Star India made a consolidated bid for the all seven markets which was larger than the combined sum of the highest bid in each category.

Sony and Star India were the only two bidders left in the fray for the Indian market after the bids were evaluated on Monday morning.

The World Sports Group (WSG) had won the initial television rights for the IPL in 2008 for $918 million for a ten-year period. These rights were then bought over by Sony for $1.63 billion in 2009.

Meanwhile, Star India had held the previous rights for the Indian digital market on a three-year deal from 2015 to 2017.

Star India chairman Uday Shankar expressed delight at winning the lucrative bid and said “We believe the IPL is a very powerful property, and we believe there is lots more value that can be created for fans of cricket on digital and TV.”

“We would remain committed to ensure the growth of sports in this country continues to be driven by the power of cricket.”

“India, cricket and IPL have changed dramatically since its inception (in 2008) and this bid is a reflection of that,” the CEO told reporters.

BCCI CEO Rahul Johri said, “Our main endeavour to the stakeholders was to provide a transparent process where there should not be any iota of doubt.”

The new deal would see the  IPL edge out the national team in terms of cost per match from 2018 onwards.

The current cost of one Indian national team match is INR 45 crore while Star India’s new bid would mean one IPL match would cost INR 55 crore.