AusLeisure

The Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) in India sold the rights to control the eight Twenty20 Indian Premier League (IPL) teams for a combined total of over US $700 million.

Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Limited was the highest bidder in all the cities paying $111.9 million for the Mumbai team. Liquor baron Vijay Mallya's UB group - which already owns Formula One team Force India - came a close second, eventually settling for Bangalore at $111.6million.

Bollywood actors Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla bid $75.09 million for the Kolkata team while Preity Zinta along with Ness Wadia, Karan Paul and Dabur's Mohit Burman acquired Yuvraj Singh's Mohali team for $76 million.

Other winners were India Cements (Chennai, $91 million), infrastructure group GMR (Delhi, $84 million), media company Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad, $107 million), and while the UK-based Emerging Media led by the entrepreneur Manoj Badale and including Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert, secured the Jaipur franchise for the lowest price of $67 million.tium.

Each successful bidder will pay 10% of the bid price to the board every year.

Franchise owners will be able to bid for players in the coming weeks, with more than 70 Indians available as well as others from Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa.

The full story of the arrival of the Indian Premier League is featured in the January/February 2008 issue of Australasian Leisure Management.

Support our industry news service
We hope that you value the news that we publish so while you're here can we ask for your support?

As an independent publisher, we need reader support for our industry news gathering so ask that - if you don't already do so - you back us by subscribing to the printed Australasian Leisure Management magazine and/or our online news.