March 23 : The figures are, quote simply, mind-boggling. A sum total of $703 million, approximately Rs 3,235 crores, for just two teams that will add to the existing eight in the Indian Premier League from next year, are staggering in terms of just numbers. When you place them against the context
of the recent worldwide economic slump, they start to defy the imagination. yet that is where the IPL and T20 cricket is headed towards in India. To put the sums the Sahara Adventure Sports Group (for Pune) and Rendezvous Sports World (for Kochi) paid for their teams in another perspective, the eight “first-comers” to the IPL collectively paid about Rs 2,840 crores before IPL-1. While these are very bug sums of money, there is a business aspect to the IPL which makes such splashy payouts feasible. In just one year, according to market figures, the IPL’s valuation, estimated at a little over $2 billion in 2009, has more than doubled, to approximately $4.1 billion in the present season that is reportedly breaking all records already in viewership and sponsorship inflows for the eight participating teams. And this is in just the nascent stages of IPL-3, mind you. Clearly, those doing their homework in putting together the successful bid amounts have tested the waters and found that their investments will pay — and handsomely — in the not very long run. Interestingly, it is pertinent to note that the failed bids for Pune ($261 million by Amonar and approximately $320 million by Videocon), and Ahmedabad ($315 million by Adani Enterprises) were almost as much as Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich had paid for Chelsea FC, among the biggest names in the professional soccer world. Clearly, cricket — at least the IPL version — is reaching stratospheric heights when it comes to drawing in the money. In return for their investments, the two new IPL owners will gain their share of the IPL pie from television income, title sponsorships and thereafter from what they can mop up from the market individually.
On a purely cricketing note, all the currently contracted cricketers go back into a common pool at the end of IPL-3 other than a few that particular teams — particularly the “icon” players — would want to retain. This means yet more money for those who have successfully paraded their wares in the first three seasons of the IPL, not to mention the fact that the two new squads will give yet more cricketers — largely from the domestic pool — a chance to enter the lucrative league and make a career out of a game that not very long ago was feasible for only the select few. Other than the shakeout from the fresh auction for the cricketers, there are bound to be interesting realignments as well. While Mumbai and Pune are very much part of Indian cricket’s 100-plus-year history, the fact that a team representing Kerala will now be in the fray as well is what is truly fascinating, and underlines like nothing else the primacy the T20 form of the game has come to embody. The southern state has for long been the bastion of sports like football, athletics, basketball — almost anything other than cricket. In cricket, there are not even a handful from the God’s Own Country who have donned national colours. Yet junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor was able to network and bring together a group of investors to fork out almost three times the amount Mukesh Ambani did as the highest bidder ahead of IPL-1. And who knows, we may even get to see the sight of Shantakumaran Sreesanth as the Kochi combine’s “icon” player. Now that truly would be something to see.
