IPL gets bigger by $703 million

The Indian Premier League (IPL) just got bigger-by size and value. As business conglomerate Sahara Group and a Rendezvous Sports World Limited-led consortium clinched the bids for two new franchisees for the next edition of the T20 extravaganza, a whopping $703 million just flown into the coffer. While the Sahara Adventure Sports Limited, a 100% subsidiary of the Sahara Group, got the Pune franchisee for a staggering $370 million (Rs 1,702 crore), the Rendezvous Sports World Limited-led consortium won the bid for Kochi for $333.33 million (Rs 1,533.53 crore). Both the franchisees are for a period of 10 years.

The bidding was held in Chennai on Sunday.
"Interestingly, the combined bid amount of the two new franchisees (Rs 3,235.53 crore) is much higher than the earlier 8 franchisees bid amount of Rs 2,840 crore, which shows there is no recession as far as IPL bidding has been concerned," said Lalit Modi, chairman and commissioner of IPL. The bidders who lost include the VC Digital Solutions of the Videocon Group ($319.90 million), Adani Group ($315 million) and Pune-based Amanora Group ($261.3 million).
Some of the cities in the fray were Pune, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kanpur, Dharamsala, Vizag, Rajkot, Cuttack, Baroda, Kochi, Indore and Gwalior. Now the minimum base price of a franchisee is fixed at $225 million for next 10 years. With the addition of two new franchisees, the number of games will go up to 94, Modi said.
The bidding process, which was originally to be held on March 7 had to be called off as most of the franchisees objected to the IPL's stringent conditions including that bidders should have a networth of $1 billion and a $100-million bank guarantee as a pre-bidding amount.
Addressing the presspersons, Modi said all the five contestants were qualified for the bidding which was extremely competitive. Sahara made the highest and similar bid amount for Pune, Nagpur and Ahmedabad and was asked to choose one of the cities and they picked Pune.
Similarly, the little-known Rendezvous Sports along with four other companies-Pavinee Developers, Anchor Earth, Film Waves and Anand Shah Developers-- made a consortium bidding only for Kochi with $333.33 million, the second highest bidding amount after Sahara.
Commenting on the group's successful bidding, Abhijit Sarkar, spokesperson of Sahara Group, said, "It has been a great pride for Sahara to be part of IPL. Our chairman has been the biggest supporter of sports in India, particularly cricket and we have been associated with BCCI for the last 15 years."
To a question, he said, "We chose Pune because of its inherent strength in logistics, infrastructure among other reasons. We see there is a commercial sense in bidding for IPL season and we draw strategies to become a profitable venture."
Shailendra Gaikwad, managing director and CEO of Rendezvous Sports, said, "We are happy to note that we have been successful in today's bidding and we have a different business model to generate significant revenues out of this. We are thankful to Lalit Modi for giving us this opportunity."
When contacted Venugopal Dhoot, chairman of Videocon Group said: "We lost the bid by a margin of around $13 to $14 million. We lost a life-time opportunity. We would have won the bid earlier if the IPL not called off the earlier bidding process, as we were the highest bidder with the same $320 million. Too much hyped created in between the bidding price had to reach a staggering $370 million now."