Star Sports are the exclusive TV rights holder of the IPL
The Indian Premier League season 16th is just a week away. Gujarat Titans will take on Chennai Super Kings to kick off the 16th season. It will be interesting to see the return of the old home-and-away format in the upcoming season, bringing back the much-awaited rivalry of the old fans after almost four years of waiting.
In addition to being special for fans, this new season will also mark an unprecedented rivalry between two of India's largest television networks, Star and Viacom18. At the moment, Star Sports is the television rights holder of the IPL, whereas Viacom18 holds digital rights.
The two networks have been very busy in the market since the bidding war ended. In order to edge out the competition, one of their main moves has been to bring in top commentators from other platforms to their platforms.
In particular, Viacom18 has signed almost all of the top Hindi commentators from Star Sports, including Aakash Chopra, Suresh Raina, Zaheer Khan and a number of others.
Star Sports still holds many top commentators in their kitty
Star Sports has also recently released its star-studded lineup of commentators for the upcoming IPL season 16 as a response to the recent announcement made by Jio Cinemas
Their line-up includes big names like Aaron Finch, Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood, Matthew Hayden, Jacques Kallis, Imran Tahir, Danny Morrison, Tom Moody, Daniel Vettori, Simon Katich, David Hussey, Yusuf Pathan, Virender Sehwag, Irfan Pathan, Mohd Kaif, S Sreesanth, Harbhajan Singh, Mithali Raj, S Badrinath, Murali Vijay, L Balaji, Sandeep Patil, Sunil Gavaskar, K Srikkanth, MSK Prasad, Venugopal Rao, T Suman, Ashish Reddy, Kalyan Krishna, Nayan Mongia, Deep Dasgupta, Aditya Tare, Amol Majumdar, Vijay Bharadwaj, Bharat Chipli, Pavan Deshpande, and Akhil Balachandra.
The first match of IPL season 16 will see defending champions Gujarat Titans taking on four-time champions Chennai Super Kings at Narendra Modi Stadium which is expected to witness 1,00,000 fans.
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