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Kolkata-based Sanjiv Goenka’s company New Rising and Delhi-based handset maker Intex have won the bids for the two new IPL franchises, which will play in the tournament for two years, 2016 and 2017. New Rising got Pune with a bid of minus Rs 16 crore while Intex got Rajkot for minus Rs 10 crore. The negative bidding was a result of BCCI following a reverse bidding process this time.
Bidders who put in the lowest amount — agreeing to accept the lowest share of the IPL’s central pool revenue — won the bids, the base price for which was set at Rs 40 crore. The central pool revenue from television rights and different sponsorship earnings for the eight teams was Rs 60-70 crore for the 2015 IPL.
Three other companies had bid for the Pune and Rajkot teams: Harsh Goenka’s RPG Properties, Chennai-based Chettinad Cements and Axis Clinicals.
The BCCI will now get an additional Rs 26 crore from these two new teams and will not have to pay them any money from the central revenues pool. This also means a larger central pool for the six existing teams over the next two years.
IPL Chairman Rajeev Shukla announced the two new teams after the Indian Premier League Governing Council met in Delhi on Tuesday.
BCCI president Shashank Manohar said that BCCI will make around Rs 300 crore in two years with the two new teams joining the IPL fray.
The two teams will now pick five players from the disbanded CSK and RR teams through a draft. New Rising, as the lowest bidder, will get to pick the first player, which would in all probability be ex-CSK skipper MS Dhoni.
"I am a great sports enthusiast and I am passionate about cricket. It is also an opportunity for our brand," said Keshav Bansal, director, Intex, whose mother is from Rajkot.
With no income from the BCCI’s central revenue pool, Bansal said it will be difficult to make profits, especially with only two years of IPL playing time. "But you never know. If we manage to win the tournament, things could change," he added.
Sanjiv Goenka of RP Sanjiv Goenka Group, which owns New Rising, said he is very keen on furthering his interest in the business of sport. "Football is one, cricket is another and there will be others as we go along. I am examining other options and possibilities," he said. "Yes we do recognise that it is a very finite window of two years.
But we believe it will create value for us, it will be a great branding opportunity for different brands within the group that includes Spencers and Saregama. And we believe that Pune makes commercial sense," he added. Goenka had bid for the Kolkata Knight Riders which he lost out on.
'NO CONFLICT OF INTEREST'
BCCI president Manohar denied any potential conflict of interest in New Rising winning the Pune team, considering that Sourav Ganguly, an IPL governing council member, is Sanjiv Goenka’s partner in the Indian Super League (ISL) football team Atletico de Kolkata.
"It is a transparent bidding process. These two games are different. People have not understood the meaning of the word conflict. Conflict of interest means where there could be an obvious bias with regards to the decision making process. When a person can influence the decision making then only there would be a conflict," he explained.
He added that New Rising had given a closed bid with which Sourav Ganguly had nothing to do.
Vinit Karnik, national director at ESP Properties, a sports and entertainment consultancy of media management house Group M, said the coming of the two new teams will open up a bigger inventory for advertisers as CSK and RR had existing longterm sponsorship deals and that inventory was not coming into the market. "Now there will be more opportunity for brands to come on to the IPL brandwagon," he said.
He also pointed out that Rajkot will be the team to watch out as Gujarat has many major business houses and this is the first time a team from Gujarat will be playing at the IPL.
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