BCCI made an announcement in Delhi recently about two new teams in the IPL for the 2016 and 2017 season. The Pune team was won by Sanjeev Goenka while the Rajkot team went to Intex group. While Rajkot is a fresh team in the foray, Pune had previously been a part of the IPL for 2 seasons until it ran into some financial troubles which led the team defunct. The team used to be known as Pune Warriors and was under the ownership of the Sahara Company.
The names of the new teams are Intex Rajkot and New Rising Pune. The names seem a lot uninspired and bland compared to many others already in the IPL, but then again it is the choice of the owners as to what to name the teams.
Both the teams will be investing an additional 16 crores and 10 crores for Pune and Rajkot respectively to build their teams and both the teams will be forgoing their revenues from the IPL’s central revenue pool. The teams will be a part of the IPL for 2016 and 2017 season since both Chennai and Rajasthan have a 2 year suspension on them as their owners were found involved in spot fixing incident.
The co-owner of Rajasthan Royals Raj Kundra and Gurunath Meiyappan, son of Srinivasan and owner of Chennai Super Kings were both declared guilty by the Justice RM Lodha of the Supreme Court for spot fixing in IPL matches and the punishment for it included banning both the teams from participating in the event for a period of two years.
Following this incident BCCI then invited new bids for two teams to participate in the IPL in place of the suspended teams to restore the quorum of teams participating to keep the tournament whole. The forms issues by the BCCI until 28th of November and two bidders who were successful in the reverse bidding process were unveiled.
IPL Chairman Rajeev Shukla explained the process of reverse bidding to PTI: “In a reverse bid, say for instance a company bids asking us for only Rs 20 crore from the broadcast rights while another company asks for only Rs 15 crore. The one that asks for less money from us gets the rights.” Here the base price for reverse bid was Rs 40 crore.
There were around 20 or so total bidders for this round and there were many big names in there as well like Star India, Cycle Agarbatti, Videocon, Yes Bank and many more looking to cash in on the big opportunity and popularity of the IPL.
On the other hand the BCCI has given the franchises which exist a window to trade players internally between 15th-31st December, 2015 and also the teams have to declare which players they plan to retain and which players they plan to let go in the next year’s auction rounds of the IPL.
rounak