UK pay-television broadcaster BSkyB has snatched the rights to cricket’s Indian Premier League, TV Sports Markets understands, beating off competition from rival pay-television operator BT and commercial broadcaster ITV, the UK rights-holder for the last four seasons.
Sky is also understood to have renewed its deal for the rights to Sri Lankan cricket in a multi-year deal.
The two deals follow seven rights deals unveiled late last month by the broadcaster as competition between Sky and BT intensifies.
Since the beginning of the year Sky has now renewed eight of its core rights properties through to the end of the decade and has now added a new property in the IPL.
BT had been interested in most of the properties but Sky had renewal options on several of them.
Full details of Sky’s January deals, with values, are included in the latest issue of TV Sports Markets which is out today (Friday).