Sanjeev Goenka owned New Rising and Intex Mobiles bagged the two IPl franchises available for a two year period with headquarters in Pune and Rajkot respectively. There was space for two teams to enter the lucrative Indian Premier league after Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals were suspended by the Justice lodha committee for spot-fixing.
In total, there were five bidders for two teams but the duo emerged on top in a reverse bidding process. Goenka’s bid of Rs minus 16 crore while Intex Mobiles’s bid of Rs minus 10 crore were the winning bids in end. Harsh Goenka’s RPG Group, Chennai-based cement giant Chettinad Group and Axis Chemicals were other three.
“They won’t take a single penny from the BCCI. In fact they will pay the BCCI,” Board Secretary Anurag Thakur said after a meeting of the IPl Governing Council on Tuesday.
Under the reverse bidding rules, investors were encouraged to bid for a lower fee than the base price of Rs 40 crore set by the IPl. This meant that the BCCI would pay a minimum of Rs 40 crore from its central revenue pool to the new owners. Having bid in the negative, New Rising will now pay the BCCI Rs 16 crore and Intex Rs 10 crores for their yearly contracts.
During the council meeting, it was also decided that the IPl will be played between 9 April till 29th May with the first match and the final both being played in Mumbai.
IPl president Rajeev Shukla, BCCI president Shashank Manohar, BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur were accompanied by the Subhashish Mitra (executive director and company secretary at New Rising) and Keshav Bansal (owner of Intex) to address the short media briefing.
The two franchises will now undergo a process of picking 5 players from both CSK and RR with the draft auction on 15th December.
Pune will have the luxury to pick the first player amongst the five capped players due to their bid being the lower of the two (4 Indian and one foreigner). Players from CSK and RR will be divided into two groups of capped and uncapped and the top names will be sold through the draft system. The two new teams will have a minimum of Rs 40 crore and a maximum of Rs 66 crore to buy their players. The players who remain unselected will be put into the fresh auction scheduled for 6th February in Bengaluru
For the ten players chosen, the BCCI has applied the same money brackets it put in place two years ago when the other six franchises were allowed to retain five players. The first player gets Rs 12.5 crore, the second Rs 9.5 crore, the third Rs 7.5 crore, the fourth Rs 5.5 crore and the fifth Rs 4 crore. An uncapped player stands to earn Rs 4 crore if he is picked. The BCCI also announced that a franchise workshop will be held in Srinagar on January 13 and 14.
BCCI revenues to go up
With both franchises opting to not go for the central revenue pool, the BCCI coffers would be richer by Rs 180 crore in a year and Rs 360 crore for the two years.
“What we had calculated was that BCCI pays them [franchises] approximate 70 crores first year out of the central revenue and next year it would be 75 crores. So that makes it 145 crore for one team. Now that 145 crore is going to be safe because they are not accepting that central revenue. Plus they are paying us 25 crore so 50 crores [across two years] more. That is the simple calculation,” Manohar said.
Other bids
All five bidders opted for more than one city from the nine available. The four bidders other than Intex all had Pune on their roster. New Rising bid Rs minus 11 crore for Nagpur. Intex also bid for Nagpur and Visakhapatnam, but quoted Rs 10 crore for each of the two cities. Chettinad, meanwhile, quoted Rs 27 crore for both Pune and Chennai.
RPG bid Rs 17.88 crore for Pune and Rs 20.88 crore for Rajkot. Intex bid Rs 10 crore for both Kanpur and Visakhapatnam. Axis, meanwhile, quoted Rs 15 crore for both Nagpur and Kanpur and Rs 10 crore for Pune.