Lucknow and Ahmedabad will be the home base of the two new franchises that are set to join the roster from the 2022 edition of the Indian Premier League, it was confirmed on Monday by the BCCI and the tournament’s governing council.
Two major corporate entities in RP Sanjiv Goenka Group (RPSG) and CVC Capital Partners (Irelia Company Pte Ltd) shed an unprecedented amount in cricket’s economics and won the bids for teams based in Lucknow and Ahmedabad, respectively.
The BCCI confirmed that the Goenka Group won the bid for the Lucknow franchise at an astonishing sum of INR 7,090 crores. The CVC has bought the Ahmedabad team for less, but still a significant amount of INR 5,625 crores.
At a base price of INR 2000 crores, the Goenka Group will be paying the BCCI more than 250% of the starting bid, while the CVC a 160% more.
The two new owners were confirmed after an extended bidding process that lasted beyond six hours in Dubai. Initially, 22 companies had bought the tender document that the BCCI had issued. However, only nine present for the walk-in-bid auction in the Middle East where the board top brass is currently present for the T20 World Cup.
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Still, the Indian board has earned a jaw-dropping amount after selling the two new IPL teams, reflective of the league’s immense popularity and foothold in the market.
ESPNcricinfo mentioned in a report, the bids were initially “enclosed” in a sealed envelope and were opened only after a “lengthy technical process”.
To oversee the entire process, apex council members – president Sourav Ganguly, secretary Jay Shah, treasurer Arun Dhumal among others – were all present. The report confirmed that the franchises will be paying their bidding amount over the next 10 years.
Ahmedabad and Lucknow were not the only cities shortlisted for the bidding process. Dharamshala, Guwahati, Indore and Cuttack were the other popular places part of the bidding document. As per rules, while the bidders were allowed to go after two cities, they could not own more than one franchise, ESPNcricinfo stated.
The Goenka Group or RPSG also bid for the Indore and Ahmedabad bases. The bidding amount from the company for Ahmedabad was the same as it was for Lucknow. For Indore, it went upto INR 4,790 crores. Apart from Ahmedabad, CVC bid for the Lucknow franchise but at a sum of INR 5,166 crores.
The BCCI expected to encash the bidding process as much as possible, ensuring that they awarded the two new teams to the highest bidding combination only. With that in mind, giving the Ahmedabad side to the CVC company would’ve meant a substantial loss, amounting to about INR 400 crores. Thus, the board decided to give RPSG the Lucknow franchise and CVC the Ahmedabad one.
This is in contrast to the inception of the IPL back in 2008 when the BCCI allowed the bidders to pick their home base by themselves. But then, those were different times when the board was only launching its product and hoping that it would flourish. Today, the IPL is not just flourishing, it is the king of the cricket market.
In a media release, Ganguly said “such a high valuation” of the two new teams “reiterates the cricketing and financial strength of our cricket ecosystem”.
“The ITT process included two interested bidders from outside of India, which strongly emphasises the global appeal of the IPL as a sports property. The IPL is proving to be a wonderful instrument in globalising the game of cricket,”
