The Indian Premier League (IPL) Media rights’ tender may have been delayed due to a few reasons however, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) Chief Sourav Ganguly has reckoned that the tender would easily fetch over Rs 40,000 crores for Indian cricket which will be conducted soon.
Although the tender was scheduled to be released immediately after the finalisation of the two new IPL teams in late October however, it hasn’t happened till now.
Notably, the sale of media rights had fetched Rs 16,347 crore for the Indian board in the ongoing 2018-22 cycle however, the BCCI chief is now expecting a rise of more than double in value of IPL rights for the next 2023-27 cycle.
“12,000 Crore for sale of two franchises was phenomenal. Fingers crossed, we should get 40,000 crore plus from the IPL Media Rights. The tenders will be conducted soon by the BCCI”, expressed Ganguly on a chat show ‘Backstage with Boria’.
Earlier in October, the BCCI had already fetched Rs 12,725 Crore from the sale of two new IPL franchises – Lucknow and Ahmedabad.
While RPSG Ventures Ltd. had acquired the Lucknow franchise for Rs 7090 crores, the Irelia Company Pvt Ltd. (CVC Capital Partners) bagged the Ahmedabad franchise for Rs 5625 crores.
“50,000 Crore for the Indian cricket, BCCI can and will further take sport to the next level. Already IPL has benefitted Indian cricket big time & with these monies the sport can go to completely different level”, the BCCI chief added.
One of the main reason for the increase in the IPL media rights value would be increase in the number of matches from next season. Moreover, compared to last time, the upcoming auctions is most likley to see a rise in number of biddres like Reliance Industries promoted Viacom, global players like Amazon and others besides Star and Sony.
Significantly, the tender for IPL media rights, which should have been out by now, has been delayed mainly due to the uncertainty surrounding the Ahmedabad franchise whose owners — CVC Sports — is yet to receive the Letter of Intent from the Indian board.
Although CVC Capital Partners had bagged the ownerhsip rights of Ahmedabad franchise, however, with the company acquiring a 100 percent equity stake in Italian gaming and payments operator, Sisal Group S.p.A. (“Sisal”), the matter became controversial.
Although betting, which is legal overseas, has not been legalised in India and as a result, CVC’s acquisition of the Ahmedabad franchise raised many questions following which there has been a delay from the Indian board in handing the Letter of Intent to CVC. Significantly, the Letter of Intent has already been submitted to the RPSG Group of Sanjiv Goenka, owners of the Lucknow franchise.
As per reports, the CVC is now trying to convince the BCCI that its investment in betting firm, which has become a bone of contention, is not illegal. Moreover, few top CVC officials had recently flown to India to have talks with the BCCI office-bearers.
Meanwhile, the BCCI’s legal team is also monitoring and looking into the CVC files.
After CVC had acquired one of the two franchise, former IPL chairman Lalit Modi ruffled a few feathers by drawing attention to the companies association with the Milan-based betting company Sisal.
“I guess betting companies can buy an IPL team. must be a new rule. apparently, one qualified bidder also owns a big betting company. what next? does BCCI not do their homework? what can Anti-corruption do in such a case? #cricket,” Modi had tweetd.