Indian Premier League will have two new franchises, Pune and Rajkot, the bid of Pune has been purchased by New Rising, a company of Sanjiv Goenka, Kolkata based businessman while the Rajkot franchise has been taken by Intex mobiles. These new franchises will replace the suspended teams of Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings for two years.
Intex mobiles will be paying Rs. 16 crore to BCCI for two year deal while for Goenka’s, amount will be Rs.10 crore.
Anurag Thakur, Board Secretary said this to the reporters after the meeting of IPL Governing Council, “They won’t take a single penny from the BCCI. In fact they will pay the BCCI.”
The process used for bidding was reverse bidding and the base price was fixed at Rs. 40 crore, the bidders needed to place a bid less than the base price and the lowest bidder was supposed to walk away with the franchise.
BCCI was compelled to go through this process as Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings have been suspended due to the involvement of some of their officials and co-owners in the IPL Spot Fixing Scandal (2013). This case has been investigated by Justice R M Lodha, retired judge of Supreme Court. Although both the suspended teams will be back in the IPL after two years.
The new teams will be able to spend anything between Rs. 40 crore to Rs. 66 crore to purchase their players.
The other bidders who participated in the process were Harsh Goenka of RPG properties, Axis Clinical and Chettinad Cement.
