The world’s biggest T20 cricket tournament, the Indian T20 Cricket League is all set to be expanded to 10 teams from the next edition onwards in 2022, with Lucknow and Ahmedabad being added as the two new franchises during the walk-in bidding session held in Dubai on Monday.
The RP Sanjiv Goenka Group (RPSG) and CVC Capital Partners (Irelia Company Pte Ltd) on Monday bid a total of $1.6 billion in the walk-in bidding event held in Dubai, which was attended by the entire top brass of the Indian cricket board. While RPSG will be paying a staggering amount of ₹7,090 crores (approx. $940 million) for the Lucknow franchise, CVC Capital, who are a private equity fund, purchased the Ahmedabad-based franchisee for a cost of ₹5,625 crores (approx. $750 million).
The bid from the RPSG was about 250% more than the base price set by the Indian cricket board of ₹2,000 crores (approx. $270 million) to purchase an Indian T20 Cricket League team, while for the CVC Capital the bid was in excess of 160% from the base price. According to reports, a total of 22 companies had purchased the tender document but only nine were present at the walk-in bid event which went on for about six hours on Monday.
While these are certainly exorbitant prices compared to what the teams paid in the first ever auction ahead of the inaugural edition in 2008, RPSG and CVC Capital will be required to pay their respective amounts over a period of 10 years.
In order to ensure that the new owners had a solid foundation, the Indian cricket board had put some tough norms in place which included having a turnover of at least ₹3,000 crore for the minimum of the last three years. This same number was said to be around ₹2,500 crores per year for the last three years in form of net asset values — assets minus liabilities. Additionally, in case of a consortium, there was a cap of not more than three bidders.
It was also reported that these bids, which were seen enclosed in a sealed envelope, were checked after a stringent and lengthy technical evaluation process. The whole procedure was overseen by the governing council of the Indian T20 Cricket League whereas the other top bosses of the board, president Sourav Ganguly, secretary Jay Shah, treasurer Arun Dhumal, vice-president Rajiv Shukla and joint-secretary Jayesh George were present.
While their team names will be announced over the course of time, Lucknow and Ahmedabad now join the other bases in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Mohali and Delhi where the 10 teams will now form the Indian T20 Cricket League. The tournament is set to be getting even bigger and more exciting from the 2022 addition onwards since there will be a grand total of 74 matches played, with each team playing 7 home and as many away matches.
The Indian T20 cricket league 2022 will witness a mega auction held before the start of the main tournament. The previous edition in 2021 was the last in which Chennai emerged victorious for the fourth time. All teams will now be disbanded as the Indian cricket board is yet to announce the number of players a franchise or a team can retain ahead of auction, or whether if they have the right to buy back players which they had in their rosters until 2021.
Devarchit Varma is a cricket writer and journalist with an experience of more than a decade, having worked at Hindustan Times (newspaper) and CricketCountry (website). Along with covering international and domestic cricket, he has also interviewed several current and former top players such as Rohit Sharma, Steve Smith, Dale Steyn, Michael Hussey, Jacques Kallis, Brendon McCullum, Shane Watson, Lasith Malinga and many more. He has also worked in other beats as a journalist in Bollywood (Reliance BigOye) and IT (SiliconIndia) industries.
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