Lucknow and Ahmedabad to be the new IPL franchises: RPSG group and CVC Capital wins bid for Rs. 12,690 crores
The bids, enclosed in a sealed envelope, were opened after a lengthy technical evaluation process.
Ahmedabad and Lucknow are the two new members of the Indian Premier League (IPL) family as it will now be a ten-team affair from the next season.
The bidding took place at the Taj Hotel in Dubai on Monday (October 25) and it is the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group (RPSG) (Lucknow) and CVC Capital Partners (Ahmedabad) who will join the cash-rich league as the new owners.
On Monday, at a walk-in bidding event in Dubai, RPSG paid INR 7090 crore (USD 940 million approx) to buy the Lucknow franchise while CVC, a private equity fund, bought the Ahmedabad franchise for INR 5625 crore (USD 750 million approx).
The BCCI was expecting a windfall in the range of Rs 10,000 crore but to their surprise, earned Rs 12,690 crore from the two new teams that will take part in the 2022 IPL.
The RPSG bid was about 250% more than BCCI’s base price of INR 2000 crore (US$270million approx). The corresponding figure for CVC was over 160%. In all, 22 companies had purchased the tender document but only nine were eventually present at the walk-in bid event held in Dubai that lasted over six hours on Monday.
