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The BCCI has garnered Rs 48,390 crore from a three-day e-auction of media rights for the IPL’s 2023-2027 cycle, with Disney-Star securing TV rights for the Indian subcontinent and Viacom18/Reliance sweeping the digital segment. The bidding was done per-game, which means that the rights holders will pay the cricket board Rs 118.02 crore per match for the next five-year cycle. Every IPL season currently has 74 matches, and that number is expected to rise. Over the course of five years, the total number will be 410. Package A – TV rights for the Indian subcontinent – was acquired by Disney-Star for Rs 23,575 crore. Packages B and C were picked by Viacom18/Reliance, which would pay the board Rs 23,758 crore. Package B covers digital rights for the Indian subcontinent, while Package C is a special bouquet of 18 matches per season with non-exclusive digital rights for the same territory. Package D — world rights for TV and digital — was shared by Viacom18 and Times for Rs 1,057 crore. To put these figures in context, Star India won the IPL media rights for the 2018-2022 cycle with a composite bid of Rs 16,347.5 crore, which included both TV and digital, with a per-match payment of Rs 54.5 crore. This time, the value of IPL media rights increased threefold, with digital proving to be the most important factor. The BCCI predicted a gain of more than Rs 45,000 crore after setting the combined base price at Rs 32,890 crore — and it wasn’t far off. The elimination of composite bids in favour of higher bids in the digital market was the pinnacle of its business strategy. “India has seen a digital revolution & the sector has endless potential. The digital landscape has changed the way cricket is watched. It has been a big factor in the growth of the game & the Digital India vision,” BCCI secretary Jay Shah tweeted after the e-auction. The fourth edition of MICA Ahmedabad’s Indian Over-the-Top (OTT) Platforms Report 2021 (post-pandemic consumption) revealed that digital subscriptions increased by 49%. Viewership was highest among those aged 15 to 34, a demographic that caters to the IPL’s ardent fans. However, Disney-digital Star’s platform Hotstar played a key role in the transformation, bringing the game to consumers’ smartphones. Uday Shankar, the former chairman-turned-CEO of Star India, orchestrated the move after pulling off a Packer-like coup in cricket broadcasting in 2017. Shankar was on Viacom18/Reliance’s side five years later when the company fought off Star’s aggressive bidding, according to sources. “The BCCI will utilise the revenue generated from IPL to strengthen our domestic cricket structure starting from grassroots, to boost infrastructure and spruce up facilities across India and enrich the overall cricket-watching experience,” Shah wrote. “Now, it’s time for state associations, IPL franchises to work together with the IPL to enhance the fan experience and ensure that our biggest stakeholder — ‘the cricket fan’ is well looked after and enjoys high quality cricket in world-class facilities, he added. With effect from June 1, the BCCI has already announced a significant increase in monthly pensions for retired cricketers and umpires, benefiting about 900 people. The IPL easily surpassed the Premier League, where broadcasters pay roughly $11 million per match, with $15.1 million each match (converted to US dollars). It was a “red-letter day for Indian cricket,” according to Shah. But, with just approximately ten countries taking cricket seriously as a commercial proposition, the main question is whether recouping the money will be a problem. In cricket, an exponential increase in media rights revenue, according to an IPL franchise executive, is anticipated to raise the team purse as well. For the following two years, the budget has been fixed at Rs 95 crore and Rs 100 crore.

The Times Higher Education (THE), the publisher of the globally recognised THE World University Rankings, has unveiled the Impact Rankings for 2022. In a record year, 1,524 universities from 110 countries/regions were ranked on their progress toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 18 tables — one for each of the 17 SDGs. India moves into the top 50 in the world, with Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham claiming 41st place overall and eighth place for SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and SDG 5 (gender equality). Lovely Professional University is ranked sixth for SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy) and is ranked joint 74th in the overall table. India is the joint fourth most-represented country in the rankings, with a total of 64 universities (the same number as Turkey). Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings 2022 have ranked Calcutta University first among all central and state-aided public universities in the country. In the sub-category of ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth,’ the university is placed 14th globally. India was represented in the rankings by at least 64 universities, making it the fourth most well-represented country. India has eight universities among the top 300 universities in the world. OP Jindal Global University (JGU) has also featured in the 600-800 band. The university received a 60.3 out of 100 score. Shoolini University of Biotechnology and Management Sciences is ranked second in the world for SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), sixth for SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), and eighth for SDG 10 (reduced inequalities). Chitkara University has ranked fourth in the country in Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings and is among the top five in almost all United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The university ranks between 201 to 300 among 1,400 universities from over 100 countries across the world. THE Impact Rankings claim to be the “world’s only rankings evaluating universities’ contributions to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” and they evaluate institutions’ commitment to sustainability in four areas: research, stewardship, outreach, and teaching. Progress is tracked for each of the 17 SDGs as well as for the entire set of goals. This year, a total of 1,524 institutions from 110 countries/regions participated in the rankings, up 23% from previous year, demonstrating the growing prominence of the SDGs inside higher education institutions around the world. Western Sydney University in Australia takes first place in the overall rating, which comprises 1,406 institutions, after topping the table for SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation) and coming in second for SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production). “It is inspiring to see such a large, diverse, and rapidly-growing community of universities from all continents committed to subjecting themselves to scrutiny, to measure and demonstrate their impact and to showcasing the best practise in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals,” said Phil Baty, Chief Knowledge Officer, THE. Students, as well as governments, are increasingly demanding such commitments and these demands will strengthen. ” “It is particularly exciting to see that universities outside the traditional Western elites are shining out as beacons in this fresh approach to university rankings, giving an exciting new perspective on a diverse sector and broadening student choice,” he added.

According to a new study from Cedars-Smidt Sinai’s Heart Institute, vesicles secreted by human heart cells may repair damaged tissue and prevent lethal heart rhythm disorders. The study, published in the European Heart Journal, could pave the way for a new approach to treating ventricular arrhythmia, a leading cause of sudden cardiac death. Experts describe the research as “poised to turn this entire field on its head” in an accompanying editorial. Ventricular arrhythmias can develop after a heart attack damages tissue, resulting in chaotic electrical patterns in the lower chambers of the heart. The heart eventually becomes so fast that it cannot support the circulation, resulting in a lack of blood flow and, if left untreated, death. The current options for treating ventricular arrhythmias caused by heart attacks are far from ideal. These include medications with severe side effects, implanted devices that deliver an electric shock, and radiofrequency ablation, a procedure in which parts of the heart are purposefully destroyed to disrupt disruptive electrical signals. Unfortunately, all of these have high recurrence rates. “An ablation is a counterintuitive approach because you are destroying heart muscle in an already weakened heart,” said Eugenio Cingolani, MD, senior author of the study and director of the Cardiogenetics-Familial Arrhythmia Program at Cedars-Sinai. “We thought, ‘What if, instead of destroying damaged tissue, we tried to repair it?’” With this in mind, the team set out to test a new approach in laboratory pigs that had suffered a heart attack. They injected some of the laboratory pigs with exosomes, which are tiny, balloon-like vesicles produced by cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs), which are progenitor cells derived from human heart tissue. Exosomes are tough particles that contain molecules as well as the molecular instructions to make various proteins, making them easier to handle and transfer than parent cells or CDCs. Eduardo Marban, MD, PhD, executive director of the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai and the Mark S. Siegel Family Foundation Distinguished Professor, was the first to develop and characterise CDCs. They’ve been used in a number of clinical trials for a wide range of diseases, most recently Duchenne muscular dystrophy. In one group of pigs, CDC-derived exosomes were injected into their hearts, while the other received a placebo. “The exosomes reduced the amount of scar tissue formed in the injured regions of the heart, normalising the rhythm without weakening the heart,” said co-author Dr. Marban. MRIs and tests to assess the electrical stability of the heart were performed on the animals. The laboratory pigs that had received the exosome therapy showed significantly improved heart rhythms and less scarring in their hearts four to six weeks after injection. Marine Cacheux, PhD, and Fadi G. Akar, PhD, both of Yale University, summarise the pros and cons of various experimental gene and cell-based approaches being studied for cardiac arrhythmias in an editorial published in the same issue of the European Heart Journal. According to Cacheux and Akar, Cedars-Sinai researchers “appear to have successfully combined the best features of cell and gene therapies to address a major unmet clinical need.” The authors note that Cedars-approach Sinai’s to repairing scarring in the heart is novel, and they describe the study as “a paradigm-shifting body of work.” Source: With inputs from ANI