Amazon skips IPL + a breather for real-money gaming

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Editor's note: Harveen here. This morning, a detailed report in Bloomberg talked about how the stage is set for two of the world’s richest men—Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries—for a clash over the media rights to the Indian Premier League. A few hours later, to everyone’s surprise, Bloomberg reported that Amazon is already planning to pull out of the race. From the report: Amazon.com Inc. is planning to withdraw from a heated competition for the rights to stream Indian Premier League cricket matches, according to people familiar with the matter, ceding one of the world’s most popular sporting contests to rivals from Walt Disney Co. to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd…The US giant is planning to throw in the towel rather than get into a bidding war, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. While Amazon hasn’t officially commented on these reports, the company doesn’t seem to have arrived for the technical evaluation of bids—a process that was supposed to begin this morning. The main contenders for the IPL digital rights now are …