Global social media giant Facebook is reportedly bidding to buy the digital rights of tenth season of Indian Premier League, one of the world's leading cricket tournament. India-based IPL is attracting many of the world's biggest companies including Twitter, Reliance Jio and Amazon Co. This unconfirmed development would apparently make it the biggest digital deal in cricket till date.
Speculation has it that Facebook already transferred 10,000$ to buy the bidding papers from BCCI and October 25th is the tentative date for an official announcement. This deal between BCCI and Facebook shows how big Mark Zuckerberg is betting on India.
Considering the internet's spread across the villages in India, there's a no-look-back situation for digital media and at the same time, there's no dearth for cricket fans on social media sites. Earlier this year, Facebook keenly tracked the season 9 of IPL where all eight teams collectively recorded a phenomenal 14 Crore viewership.
Also, every 9 of 10 Twitter users in India are considered to be steadfast cricket fans. Statistically, in 2016, Twitter witnessed 56% growth in tweet count compared to last year and logged 1.06crore tweets during IPL-9. It also could be a sign of the start of period of increased internet users, particularly in villages.
However, Facebook refused to either comment or rule out the reports. Other giants are seriously racing up to battle Facebook with a proper bidding deal.