In June 2022, India’s cricket board was preparing to auction the media rights to the Indian Premier League tournament, and expectations in Mumbai were stratospheric. Bankers and broadcasters were bracing for a bruising bidding war, and the board itself was counting on one company above all to push prices higher: Amazon.com Inc.

Executives who favored the deal argued that cricket, one of India’s most potent cultural and commercial properties, would cast a halo over the Amazon brand and further the company’s ambition of becoming the biggest e-commerce operation in the world’s most populous nation. Then hours before the auction, Amazon pulled out — ceding the rights to Walt Disney Co. and India’s Reliance Industries Ltd.