The Sanjeev Goenka-owned RPSG group and international investment firm – CVC Capital – on Monday bagged the ownership rights of the two new franchises of the cash-rich Indian Premier League (IPL).
While the RPSG Group picked Lucknow as their home base with a winning bid of Rs 7090 crores, the CVC Capital went for Ahmedabad with the second-highest bid of the auctioning which is in excess of Rs 5000 crores.
After the development, Sanjiv Goenka, who previously owned the Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS), said: “A lot of planning and calculation has gone into our bidding.”
“I give credit to personal staff for winning the bid,” Goenka was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.
Notably, CVC is the same firm which had attempted a deal with La Liga (but was opposed by Real and Barca) and now has an elaborate plan to bring together ATP and WTA Tours with a fund that can go up to four billion dollars.
Private Equity player CVC Capital had recently bought LA Liga and also owns Formula One and Rugby teams.
Notably, as many as 10 parties had entered the bidding war on Monday and had got an option to choose from from six centres – Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Cuttack, Dharamsala, Guwahati and Indore – to base their team in.
As per reports, all the interested parties were asked to submit two envelopes – one for personal and financial credentials and the second for the bid and the entire process was overseen by the IPL Governing Council as well as the BCCI top officials like president Sourav Ganguly, secretary Jay Shah, treasurer Arun Dhumal, vice-president Rajeev Shukla and joint-secretary Jayesh George.
Now after acquiring the teams, both the parties will need to pay the entire amount over a period of 10 years.
Earlier, the Adani Group was considered to be a front-runner in acquiring a team however, they eventually opted out of the bidding war after their last call of Rs 5000 crore. On the other hand, Torrent, Manchester United’s owner, Aurobindo Pharma and other players didn’t even came close to the Rs 5000 crore-mark.
These new franchises – Ahmedabad and Lucknow – will now be a part of the 15th edition of the lucrative league, taking the total number of teams to 10 from eight.
The next edition of IPL is likley to be staged in the March-April window and a mega auction for it will most probably be held in December this year or January, 2022.
Last week, discussions on the issue of retention of players took place between the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the eight franchise owners following which it was decided that a franchise can retain up to three Indian players and two overseas players with the overall count for retained players not crossing four.
Meanwhile, the player purse will be Rs 90 crore and in the subsequent two years, there will be an incremental hike and the purse will go up to Rs 95 crore and Rs 100 crore.
Earlier, a total of 22 entities had bought the Invitation to Tender (ITT) document from the BCCI, price of which was kept at Rs 10 lakh each.