The Indian Premier League remains the only Asia Pacific sports property priced at the top of the global market, according to new research from Media Partners Asia, which expects growth in the region’s sports rights fees to slow to 1%–2% a year through 2030, down from about 10% a year since 2021. The cricket league earns about $12.4 million a match, in line with the Premier League, MPA said. Korea’s KBO baseball league earns about $100,000.
India accounted for more than half of the increase in the region’s rights fees since 2021, and 64% of all fees is now concentrated in the 12 most valuable rights packages. The figures come from “APAC’s Sports Economy and Where Value Goes Next,” an MPA report covering 14 markets that draws on the company’s tracking of 150-plus rights contracts across properties and markets. MPA has published a summary of that report alongside findings from “APAC Sports Fandom: The Consumer’s Voice,” a companion study by ampd, MPA’s data and analytics arm, which polled 10,249 fans across six markets.
The summary coincides with the second edition of MPA’s APOS Sports Edge forum, held at The METT in Singapore in the run-up to the city’s Formula 1 Grand Prix weekend. MPA puts the region’s commercial sports economy at $16.2 billion in 2026. Media rights are the biggest category, worth $6.1 billion, followed by sponsorship at $4.7 billion, ticketing and hospitality at $3.9 billion and merchandise at $1.5 billion.
Rights fees rose 58% over five years to $5.7 billion. The wider sports economy is projected to expand by around 5% annually, reaching roughly $19.5 billion by 2030, with sponsorship and ticket sales doing most of the lifting. Streaming services paid 50% of rights fees this year, up from 36% in 2021.
MPA said streamers now determine pricing in most markets. Yet just 3% of lapsed fans who returned to a sport did so because it appeared on a platform they already used, according to MPA. It is the end of the easy part,” said Vivek Couto, CEO and executive director of MPA.
Couto said the region generates about $4 in commercial sports revenue per person, compared with upward of $200 in North America. The next dollar will come from the seat, the sponsor, the local star and the women’s game, and it will go to the rights-holders who know their fans by name,” he said. MPA estimates that sponsorship priced on audience data could grow 6%–7% a year to 2030.
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