Franchises express concerns as BCCI decides to tender for new team post Diwali

After the Tuesday final between Mumbai Indians and Delhi Capitals, The Hindu reported that the Indian Cricket Board is mulling the option of adding another team to the roster for the 2021 season after advising the franchises to be ready for a mega auction in early next year. However, TOI reported that a decision on the same will be taken in next 72 hours as the board's top office-bearers and the league's governing council will meet.

While Ahmedabad is touted as the major city to have its own franchise, with the world’s biggest stadium Motera as the venue, Adani Group, the Tatas and the RPG-Sanjiv Goenka Group are keen to own a franchise. However, that has created a problem for the eight existing franchises who have central revenue pool in the current rights cycle.

The cited concerns are:

a) The central revenue pool is unlikely to change until the 2023 edition and therefore, new teams coming in will result in the present revenue cycle getting diluted.

b) With the 2021 edition of the league slated to begin anytime between last week of March and first week of April, there's not enough time (just three-and-half months) to do a mega auction

c) If one new franchise is brought in, it will result in 60 matches going up to 76, in the present format. If two new franchises are brought in, the number of matches will go up to 90 and a major concern is that the IPL window is too short to adjust these games.

Duff & Phelps recently valued IPL in excess of US$6 billion which is a case thanks to the multi-billion deal in place with Star owning the rights. The BCCI will come up with a new tender in 2021 to have a new broadcaster for the IPL 2023 which will change the revenue pool once again.

"The BCCI will come up with a media rights tender towards the end of 2021. Star's five-year IPL deal will end with the 2022 season and the board will look to maximise its broadcast revenue. BCCI should ideally bring out a tender for new franchises after the media rights tender because they'll get a higher value. In the middle of this pandemic, it's always a risky proposition," said industry sources.