Ahmedabad and Lucknow will be the two new teams of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced on October 25, shortly after concluded the auction.
Private equity firm CVC Capital Partners has won the bid for Ahmedabad at Rs 5,625 crore, whereas, the Sanjiv Goenka-led RPSG Group has clinched the franchise of Lucknow at a price of Rs 7,090 crore, BCCI said.
"The new franchises will participate in IPL from 2022 season onwards subject to the bidders completing the post-bid formalities as specified in the ITT document," the nodal Indian cricket body said in a press release.
The Adani Group, which also participated in the teams' auction, lost out in the bidding process.
The bids for the two new IPL teams were submitted earlier in the day, and the verification process was subsequently initiated in Dubai.
The auction began with ten entities submitting bids to own a team in one of the six cities, namely, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Cuttack, Dharamsala, Guwahati and Indore.
"The IPL will now go to two new cities in India viz in Lucknow and Ahmedabad. It is heartening to see the inclusion of two new teams at such a high valuation, and it reiterates the cricketing and financial strength of our cricket ecosystem," BCCI president Sourav Ganguly said, after the auction results were declared.
BCCI honorary secretary Jay Shah said he is "thrilled for the people of Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat as the long wait is over and they will now have their own IPL team."
According to media reports, 22 firms had initially picked up tender documents worth Rs 10 lakh. However, as the base price for the two new IPL teams was pegged at Rs 2,000 crore, only a few serious bidders were eventually in the fray.
The BCCI had allowed a consortium of up to three companies/individuals to bid for a franchise. However, in the case of an individual or company, that particular entity’s annual turnover should be a minimum of Rs 3,000 crore and in the case of a consortium, each of the three entities should have an annual turnover of Rs 2,500 crore.
The BCCI was expected to earn around Rs 5,000- Rs 7,000 crore from the sale of these two new IPL franchises. This income will be in addition to the over Rs 450 crore it earns from its share of broadcasting and sponsorship revenues for the upcoming IPL season in 2022.
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