From Adani to Jindal to the Glazers: The race is on for a new IPL team

Let’s rewind to 2006-07. Lalit Modi was trying to sell the idea of Twenty20 cricket to top officials at the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Having spent a few years in the United States, Modi had been awe-struck by the ability of the National Basketball Association, or NBA, to generate huge revenues. So, he wanted to replicate the idea back home.

As an outsider, Modi had failed in his earlier mission to start a new 50-over league in 1995, titled the Indian Cricket League Limited. But now, being an insider and the vice-president of the BCCI, he was confident of implementing his ideas to control the world’s cricket with money power.

Later, Modi may have been forced to flee India after the 2010 season of the Indian Premier League. But his ideas to make the BCCI the richest cricket board has grown from strength to strength. A fine example is BCCI’s advertisement a few days ago for two new teams in the IPL. What has now come out from BCCI headquarters is that about 20 new parties have shown interest in owning the two new teams on offer.

And one of these parties is Gujarat’s Adani Group, tipped as favourites to own a team.

Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Guwahati, Dharamshala, Ranchi and Cuttack are the franchise cities put up for purchase by the BCCI. The IPL bid document costs Rs 10 lakh (GST extra) and a lot of business houses and big corporate houses are buying the bid document this time around.

Knowing that the BCCI is now controlled by just one man – Jay Shah, the son of home minister Amit Shah – there’s hardly any doubt in cricketing circles that one of the teams will certainly go to Ahmedabad, where a stadium with a capacity of over a lakh has been built in the name of prime minister Narendra Modi.

The sale of the two new franchises in the IPL is scheduled to take place in Dubai on Monday, October 25. The base price for the team has been set at Rs 2,000 crore. But it isn’t confirmed as to whether all parties will be in Dubai for the auction.

Among others, the US-based Glazer family, which owns Manchester United, picked up an IPL team bid document on the last day, October 20. Bollywood couple Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone could team up with someone – star footballer Cristiano Ronaldo’s name is being mentioned as someone who was approached – to own one of the new IPL teams.

Then there’s Corporate Venture Capital, or CVC, a private equity house in the US which recently bagged 14.3 percent stake in the Six Nations Rugby tournament in Europe after shelling out $509 billion. The company, which also has stakes in Formula One, tried to capture the market in New Zealand and has now set its eyes on buying a team in the cash-rich IPL. However, any foreign company showing interest in buying IPL properties needs to have an Indian wing.

Other names that picked up the invitation to tender forms are the Kolkata-based RP Sanjiv Goenka Group, the owners of the now defunct franchise Rising Pune Supergiants; the Kotak group; Aurobindo Pharma; Torrent Pharma; entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala; Hindustan Times Media; Jindal Steel, led by Naveen Jindal; the Singapore-based PE Firm; Broadcast & Sport Consulting; Agencies ITW; and Group M.

It’s important to note that the IPL had hosted a 10-team tournament in 2011 by adding Pune Warriors and Kochi Tuskers. Though the Tuskers ran into trouble after just one season, the Warriors played until 2013. During the spot-fixing case, the suspension of Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals from the league allowed the BCCI to induct Rising Pune Supergiants and Gujarat Lions as temporary participants for two seasons.

Strange terms and conditions

The IPL’s governing council had initially issued the invitation to tender documents available on payment on August 31. The last date mentioned then was October 5. This was later extended to October 10 on the pretext that requests had come in for the same.

But by then, as many as 18 forms were picked up by various parties. Going by insiders, it was done after a request from the Glazers.

Under the financial eligibility clause 2.4.1, the average “turnover of each bidder” was set at Rs 3,000 crore for the last three years. And in the case of a consortium bid, the turnover for the last three of each member (not more than three in any case) of the consortium was set at Rs 2,500 crore each. In all, if Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh bid for a new IPL team along with one more individual, then the combined turnover of the three of them has to be Rs 7,500 crore instead of Rs 3,000 crore in the case of a single company.

This, as alleged by many in the cricketing circle, was done deliberately to help a few potential bidders and to kill the competition.

The base price for new IPL teams is pegged at Rs 2,000 crore. The BCCI expects anything between Rs 7,000 crore to Rs 10,000 crore from the team bidding. The new teams are expected to be sold at around 50 to 75 percent more than the current base price (Rs 2,000 crore) set by the BCCI.

The bid papers will be opened on October 25, a day after the high-voltage T20 World Cup clash between India and Pakistan.

As per insiders in the BCCI, there were requests from multiple groups to reduce the financial criteria of Rs 3,000 crore turnover and Rs 2,500 crore net worth. Because it was seen as a deliberate attempt by the cricket board to favour a particular company (read Adani). However, the BCCI refused to budge on the financial aspect of the new teams.

The front-runners

The 2022 season of the IPL is set to have 10 teams. Earlier, the Adani Group and the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group were in a two-horse race to own the new IPL 2022 teams for the upcoming edition of the T20 tournament.

However, the race has now widened after reports emerged that the Glazer family was interested in owning a team. If the Glazers, an American family that is best known for owning NFL franchise Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Premier League outfit Manchester United, decide to put a serious bid for a new franchise, then it may not be an easy thing for the others to compete with such a big name.

The late Malcolm Glazer acquired the Premier League outfit in 2005. After his death, his six children (Avram, Joel, Kevin, Bryan, Darcie and Edward Glazer) got an equal amount of stake. The Glazer family also has interests in banks, healthcare facilities, and television stations, among others.

If the family decides to put money into the new IPL team, then there are chances that cricket may be taken to new territories of the US to make it a global entity.

On the other hand, Deepika and Ranveer are likely to join hands with another individual to bid for a new team. The details are yet not known to anyone inside the BCCI. While Deepika’s father Prakash Padukone is a former world No. 1 badminton player and an All England champion, Ranveer has been the brand ambassador for both the English Premier League and the NBA.

However, Deepika and Ranveer won’t be the first from Bollywood to own an IPL team. Kolkata Knight Ridersis co-owned by superstar Shah Rukh Khan and actress Juhi Chawla while Preity Zinta has stakes in Punjab Kings. Bollywood actor Shilpa Shetty was also gifted a stake in Rajasthan Royals by her husband Raj Kundra.

There are talks of a former India cricketer also in the run for the bid as part of the consortium. The player, by investing his own money to be a minority stakeholder of the consortium, however wants to offer his expertise to the new franchisee.

Another one in the race is Naveen Jindal, chairman of Jindal Steel & Power, who wants to set up his team based in Cuttack, Odisha.

Though Delhi-based media baron Shobhana Bhartia’s Hindustan Times Media house, a part of the KK Birla group, has also picked up a form, people in the know of the things in the BCCI are not taking their interest seriously, considering the group was once close to the Congress party. Bhartia became the first female chief executive of a national newspaper in 1986 and was later nominated as Rajya Sabha MP from the Congress. Along with Hindustan Times, HT Media owns Desimartini, Fever 104 FM, and Mint newspaper.