New IPL franchise with lowest bid will get first shot at Mahendra Singh Dhoni

                         

The wait to find the owners of the two new IPL franchises necessitated by the two-year suspension of Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, ends on Tuesday afternoon when the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) opens tenders in Delhi for new teams. Even though this isn’t an auction for players, the potential owners’ bid amount is likely to be influenced by IPL’s most-endorsed player and cricket’s biggest brand Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

The reason for this is a clause in the tender document which states that the team which submits the lowest bid will have the first right to pick the player of their choice from among the group of elite Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals cricketers.

On December 15, top 10 players from the two teams will go on sale at the Player Draft and the CSK and India T20 skipper Dhoni is likely to be first-choice of the franchise. A regular on the Forbes’ list of highest-paid sportpersons, Dhoni has had a big role to play in India Cements, the company that owns CSK, becoming a popular brand around the country.

The IPL tender, which The Indian Express possess, says: “The Team which submitted the lowest bid in response to the invitation to tender will have the right to choose the first player in the Player Draft.”

It also talks about the possibility whereby the lowest bids are equal. “In the case of tied equal lowest Bids the names of the two teams will be placed in sealed envelopes … a designated authority from BCCI will choose one of these envelopes with the team being chosen having the first right to select a player in the player draft.”

A top BCCI official says this was a great opportunity to acquire Dhoni. “No one would have imagined that Dhoni would part ways with CSK. In the earlier regime, CSK owner and BCCI president N Sriniwasan saw to it that a players’ retention clause was inserted in IPL. Now suddenly, so many players are available.”

Other players who the new franchise will have a chance to buy are R Ashwin, Ravinder Jadeja, Ajinkya Rahane, Brendon McCullum and Shane Watson. As per the tender, the first capped player will be paid 12.5 crores while the remaining four capped players will get 9.5 crores. 7.5 crores, 5.5 crores, and 4 crores. Whereas for any uncapped player it will be four crores. This in effect means a franchise can get Dhoni for 12.5 crores. The total salary cap for the team is about Rs 66 crores.

Many in the BCCI feel that the potential to be associated with big brands like Dhoni is one reason for the buzz around the team auction. Sources in the BCCI have informed that 21 well-known companies like Intex, Chennai-based cement companies Chettinad Group and ITW (ITW bought a consortium led by Cycle Agarbatti), Haldiram Foods International Pvt. Ltd, RPG of Sanjiv Goenka Group, DHFL, Videocon, and media entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala’s Unilazer have shown interest in the two new IPL teams for next two years. The cities offered to two new IPL teams are Chennai, Cuttack, Dharamsala, Indore, Kanpur, Nagpur, Pune, Rajkot, Ranchi and Vishakapatnam.

There also happens to be a clause in the tender document that doesn’t allow the teams to use names of present or suspended franchises. “New franchises cannot use the name ‘IPL’, ‘BCCI’, ‘Rajasthan’, ‘Royals’, ‘Chennai’, ‘Super Kings’ or any resembling name. This is done since the Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals aren’t totally out of IPL, they will return after two years and we wanted to protect their brand,” said a BCCI official.

Despite the fact that the two teams are expected to exist only for two years, interest in bidders is high owing perhaps to the reverse bidding process being employed. Bidders will be bid for a share from the central revenue pool of the IPL and the two lowest bids will win the two new teams. The base price for the reverse bid is 40 crore rupees.In return for getting a reduced share of the central revenue pool, two new owners any franchise fee benefit by not having to pay any franchise fee to the BCCI, unlike the other six teams who are paying 10% of their bidding amount to BCCI for the next ten years.

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