Ex-CEO of Sony thrilled by the $80 million facilitation fee

Sony-EntertainmentThe ex-CEO of Sony Entertainment has recently said that he was surprised to see that Multi Screen Media has paid a whopping $80 million to World Sports Group as facilitation fee as it was not decided in the contract. According to Gupta, the contract had an extra break-up fee of $25 million after the fifth season ends wherein it had the first right of refusal as far as telecasting the sixth season was concerned.

Notably, Sony had bagged the rights for the first five years for $300 million while WSG had opted to bag rights for another five years for a consolidated $600 million.

Gupta added the fact that since at that moment it wasn't sure that how the IPL is going to hit the Indian consumer, the channel settled for rights just for five years.

In fact, after Gupta quit the channel, the real problems between Sony, BCCI and WSG started. Gupta is busy selling advertisements via his digital media agency called Pioneer Diagsys.

Moreover, he believes that going forward, revenues from TV ads will just be a miniscule part of revenues that IPL will bank in the future with money coming from theatres, mobiles and online space.