The 15th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is said to take place in the year 2022. It is a professional cricket league hosted by the Board of Control of Cricket of India (BCCI) comprising of cricket players from all the countries except Pakistan. Almost every edition of the IPL since its tenure of 14 years has had eight teams except for certain exceptions. One such includes the year 2011, two additional teams played in the tournament and the year 2013 wherein nine teams played cricket in IPL.
After a decade, the Board Of Control For Cricket of India (BCCI), is ready to introduce and introduce an expansion in the game by adding two new teams with the city is Ahmedabad and Lucknow into the tournament by taking the total tally of the number of teams playing the series from 8 to 10.
Back in 2011, the 10 teams were divided into 2 groups comprising of five teams each, wherein they were showcased together on one points table according to the wins and losses. The names of both the new teams along with the jerseys have not been decided yet and will be unveiled ahead of the mega auction that awaits for the new addition of IPL 2022.
A lot of buzz has been created ahead of the 15th edition of IPL about the team owners of the new teams As both of them have been bought at an extremely high price that is a lot more than BCCI’s officials had anticipated. The beat for purchasing a team began at 2000 crores and the highest bid was one at Rs 7090 crores and the second one at Rs 5625 crores.
The BCCI president Sourav Ganguly recently said that he has been extremely happy to see the results of the bidding since it is set to bring much greater prospects for the tournament as well as a high amount of revenues for the board of control of cricket of India (BCCI).
The buying took place on 25 October 2021 in Dubai. A lot of popular businessmen and business enterprises participated in the bidding looking forward to purchasing a cricket team in one of the biggest cricket tournaments. Adani group, Naveen Jindal, RP Sanjiv Goenka, Irelia (CVC Capital), and lancer capital (owner of Manchester United) participated in the bidding.
Amongst all the popular and powerful businessmen RP Sanjiv Goenka and CVC capital won the bidding with an amount of ₹7,090 crores by purchasing the team Lucknow and Irelia (CVC Capital) won the bid at ₹5,625 crores by purchasing the team Ahmedabad.
Both the cities recently got their stadiums. Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium or popularly known as Ekana Cricket Stadium was established in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh in 2017 while, Motera Cricket Stadium now known as Narendra Modi Stadium which is the largest cricket stadium in the world was established in 2020.
Let’s look at the owners of both the much-anticipated teams-
1. RP Sanjiv Goenka – RP Sanjiv Goenka Group is a multinational conglomerate Unicorn company in India with a market valuation of over $4 billion along with $6 billion assets in the market. The group almost 40 years ago acquired CEAT tires India. The company has a wide range of investments in different sectors of the business world ranging from sports to infrastructure to IT companies and many more.
The company owns consumer brand Too Yum, a food and snacking company which produces healthy chips. Virat Kohli was selected as the brand ambassador for this company. Other retail businesses owned by the company are Evita, Spencer’s Retail, Nature’s basket, Dr. Vaidya’s, Quest mall, woodland’s hospital, Harrisons Malayalam Ltd., Open, Saregama India Ltd., Fortune India, Editorji, and Fitsource.
The company is also home to almost 6 power projects namely, CESC Ltd., Haldia Energy Ltd., Dhariwal Infrastructure Ltd., Noida Power Co. Ltd., Integrated Coal Mining Ltd., Cresent Power Limited, and Surya Vidyut Ltd. The company also bought the IPL team Rising Pune Supergiant which played in the tournament for two years in 2016 to 2017 and enter the finals of the play-offs in 2017.
2 Irelia (CVC Capital) – CVC Capital is an overseas investment advisory firm. The company‘s main focus is venture capitalism and focuses on objects that require large investments with great potential revenue and income returns. The company has made investments according to the share and returns received from past experiences.
The company is set to complete over five lakh (5,00,000) investments in not just their Country or the city in which their headquarters belong but to all over the world in major businesses be it a startup or a sports tournament. The company possesses a market valuation of over $111 billion.
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Edited by Anupama Roy
