RPSG Group and CVC Capital land successful bids to acquire Lucknow and Ahmedabad IPL teams
Following the bidding process that was held in Dubai, BCCI announced that Ahmedabad and Lucknow will compete in the 10-team IPL tournament. While CVC Capital put in the winning bid for Ahmedabad, Sanjiv Goenka and the RPSG Group secured Lucknow as their home base.
The Sanjiv Goenka-owned RPSG group has won the Lucknow franchise by bidding for over ₹7,000 crore and private equity firm CVC Capital the second franchise at over ₹5,000 crore, the BCCI announced on Monday.
BCCI held the process of identifying the two new IPL franchises in Dubai. It will add two more teams and expand the 2022 tournament to 10 teams.
“The BCCI is happy to welcome two new teams from the next season of the Indian Premier League. I would like to congratulate RPSG Ventures Ltd. & Irelia Company Pte Ltd for being the successful bidders. The IPL will now go to two new cities in India viz in Lucknow and Ahmedabad,” BCCI President Sourav Ganguly was quoted as saying in a press release.
“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. True to IPL’s motto of ‘Where Talent Meets Opportunity’, the inclusion of two new teams will bring more domestic cricketers from our country to the global stage. The ITT process included two interested bidders from outside of India, which strongly emphasises the global appeal of the IPL as a sports property. The IPL is proving to be a wonderful instrument in globalising the game of cricket. I am keenly looking forward to IPL 2022,” he added.
The RPSG Group picked Lucknow as their home base with a winning bid of Rs.7,090 crore and CVC Capital opted for Ahmedabad with a bid of Rs.5,166 crore, reports said. The franchise aspirants had a choice of picking from six cities—Cuttack, Dharamsala, Guwahati and Indore being the others.
The potential franchises had to submit details of their financial and personal credentials. BCCI’s legal and audit officials first checked the credentials of the bidders, and only then was the second envelope containing the bids opened, cricket website Cricbuzz reported.
Sunrisers Hyderabad, the last team to join IPL via a tender process in 2012, had paid Rs. 850 crore. The base price for the new team this time was fixed at Rs. 2,000 crore. A total of 22 entities had bought the tender document.
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