The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will reach out to large corporates, including the Tatas, Adanis and the Sanjiv Goenka group, to gauge their interest in taking ownership of new teams being considered for the Indian Premier League’s (IPL) next edition, in 2021.
A top BCCI official told BusinessLine that a decision on whether to have new teams or not will be taken next week. Now, there are eight IPL teams. The plan is to add one or two more, the official said.
“A final decision is yet to be taken as it also involves broadcasters and existing teams. There will be more matches if new teams are brought in and we may have to go for fresh auctions so that the new teams have an opportunity to acquire players,” the official added. The BCCI will float a tender seeking bids from entities that want to own a new team. Movie stars from Bollywood and South India may also be roped in to take equity stakes similar to some of the existing IPL teams.
The Tata, Adani and Sanjiv Goenka groups did not respond to email queries from BusinessLine. Goenka had earlier owned Rising Pune Supergiant, which played its last IPL match in 2017.
But some of the existing franchisees are not in favour of opening up the field to a new team as they fear losing their key players in the event of a fresh auction.
“It can erode the value of a successful franchisee if some of their top players are bought out by another team during the auction,” said the owner of an existing franchisee.