VARIED INTERESTS
Representative Image: Indian Premier League © BCCI/IPL
A top European football club, a venture capitalist group that owns the rugby league in Europe and ran the Formula One previously and an Orissa-based industrial house that produces steel, power and coal are among the new additions to the list of aspirants to own an Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise.
As the deadline for the sale of Invitation To Tender (ITT), the INR 10 lakh document, ended on Wednesday, Cricbuzz has learnt that some new parties have joined the queue to bid for the ninth and 10th IPL franchises, the sale of which will be done in Dubai on October 25. About 20 parties have bought the ITT document.
There is no guarantee that all the purchasers will end up in Dubai to place bids but some of the new parties, names of which have come out, add new dynamics to the team auction. The base price for the team at the auction has been fixed at INR 2000 crore. Whether the new team will end up costing double the reserve price is for a later date, but given the competition, those desperate to own the teams may, well, be forced to up their game.
The CVC venture capital, an American private equity house, has stakes in the Formula One, arguably one of the richest sports in the world. The global private equity firm has recently shelled out USD 509 million for a 14.3 per cent stake in the Six Nations Rugby tournament in Europe. CVC had also tried to invest in New Zealand rugby. It is now bracing up to buy an IPL team.
Another hitherto unknown aspirant is Naveen Jindal, a former member of Lok Sabha and the current chairman of the Jindal Steel and Power, with business interests in the coal sector as well, is believed to be weighing the option of having a franchise in Cuttack, Orissa, where his group has set up industries. Also interested is a famous football club in Europe, said an official of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) without disclosing the name.
These parties join the already interested business houses like the Adani Group, Sanjeev Goenka, two major pharmaceutical companies – Torrent and Aurobindo – and the Kotak Group with companies in insurance, securities and banking sectors.
Star producing the World Cup
In entirely different development in world cricket, Star Sports has got the production rights of the on-going Twenty World Cup ahead of Sunset & Vine, a UK-based production firm that produced many International Cricket Council (ICC) events, including 2019 World Cup and the recent World Test Championship in UK.
It has emerged that Star, which also owns the global broadcast rights of the ICC events, has managed to land the production deals of the two ICC events that were allotted to India – the current T20 World Cup and 2023 50-over World Cup. Next year’s T20 World Cup in Australia, however, will be produced by Sunset & Vine.
The ICC confirmed the development and said that Star has got the rights for the two India events and the rest are with S&V. The previous T20 World Cup, held in India in 2016, was produced by the UK firm only.
“When the broadcaster also does the production there are many advantages, including an opportunity to dictate the narrative,” said an industry expert analysing the move, which apparently was executed by previous Star India Head Uday Shankar. Star and Shankar did not respond to messages from this website.
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