DLF walks away with the IPL title rights

Real estate mega-developer DLF group comfortably walked away with the title sponsorship rights, despite being the last entrant, of the much famed Indian Premier League (IPL) being promoted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India for an amount of Rs 200 crores combing out big shots of the arena Future and Hero Honda Group.

DLF, which entered in the fray at the eleventh hour along with Future Group (represented by Percept D’Mark) and Hero Honda (represented by WSG), will sponsor the tournament for the next five years at an annual cost of Rs 40 crores.

BCCI had received bids from only a handful of companies including the abovementioned companies, while 21st Century Media’s bid was discarded regarding the sports management company could not specify the product group detail on which behalf they were bidding.

The base price set by BCCI was Rs 23.6 crores and only 21st Century Media was in the fray till Monday, but it pulled out at the last minute refusing to reveal the product it would sponsor.

Future Group’s bidding amount was Rs 30.1 crores while Hero Honda bid for Rs 30.6 crores for one year. It is come to known that 21st Century Media was representing for Pepsi but they didn’t disclose it.

According to IPL chairman Lalit Modi, “The sponsorship race was closely challenged among the participants with DLF emerging the winner through a fair and transparent process.”

One of the pre-qualifications of the bidding process was to make known the product category but 21st Century Media was not ready to reveal that, hence they pulled out of the race.

The BCCI had to also extend the date of the performance guarantee deposit of Rs 10 crores by a day as it was initially asked to bidders to deposit their guarantee money by Monday but after finding only one company in the fray, the board extended it.

The 44-day competition, which begins on April 18, will feature eight franchised teams, consisting two overseas stars. The eight franchises are based in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Jaipur and Kolkata.

The owners of the franchisee will participate in an auction in Mumbai on February 20 to bid for players from Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa including the stars of India's national team.