IPL 2022: “Ahmedabad franchise ownership is undecided” – BCCI

A month ago, BCCI announced the inclusion of two new teams to the already existing 8 teams for IPL. The ownership of Ahmedabad franchise is still undecided which resulted in…

By Swagata Choudhury

November 21, 2021

2 min read

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A month ago, BCCI announced the inclusion of two new teams to the already existing 8 teams for IPL. The ownership of Ahmedabad franchise is still undecided which resulted in the delay of IPL Media Rights.

It is speculated that the tender will fetch over Rs 30,000 crore and there are several assumed reasons for delay in releasing tender. One significant reason could be the involvement of CVC Capitals with betting. The BCCI will most definitely deliver a letter of intent to them.

The second reason behind the delay in releasing the tender could be the confusion between E-Auction and Closed Bidding as the process. Closed Bidding has left a party spending a lot of money and in the recent Bidding process where RPSG Group of Sanjiv Goenka placed Rs.7090 crore bid to remain ahead of the potential competitors. The company finally won the Lucknow franchise, the second highest bid was Rs.1500 crore less than the winner.

In the E-auction, the potential bidders are Star, Sony-zee and an upcoming channel of Jio. It is expected The the the highest bid and the second highest bid will differ marginally.

BCCI on 28 September 2021 in a media release stated that “The IPL Media Rights tender for the cycle 2023-2027 will be released immediately after the appointment of two new IPL teams which is scheduled to be announced on 25th October 2021,”

As per reports, a powerful BCCI member is not in favour of giving the ownership of IPL team to Irelia Company Pte Ltd who allegedly have investments in a betting company.

The other BCCI members want the ownership should be granted to CVC Capital Partner promoter entity but they have to clear all technical and due-diligence rounds.

When the issue of ownership of Ahmedabad franchise is sorted, the IPL Media Rights tender will be released immediately. In the mean time, the potential bidders for IPL Media Rights are comprehensive about this fact.