SRK in race to own Indian Premier League team
Mumbaii, India - Jan 23, 2008
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has met with a lukewarm response with merely ten corporates and a consortium of financial experts forking out the guarantee deposit for owning a Indian Premier League (IPL) team franchisee.

Bidders
- Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, GMR group, Nirulas, Deccan Chronicle and Reliance Industries are in the fray.

- Companies will now submit bids on Thursday and the winners will be announced on the same day by BCCI

- Since the IPL will work on a franchise model, the corporate will be the owner of a team and not sponsor
According to sources close to the development, the ten corporates include Shah Rukh Khan’s production company Red Chillies Entertainment, infrastructure company GMR group, fast food giant Nirulas, media company Deccan Chronicle, Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Industries, real estate major DLF, Videocon Industries, Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, India Cement and Vijay Mallya, the liquor and airline baron.

The consortium includes a group of individuals from the financial sector.

The corporates interested in bidding for team ownership picked up tenders for Rs 4 lakh, and the participating corporates had to shell out Rs 20 crore as a guarantee deposit on January 22 for the bidding process scheduled for January 24.

Lalit Modi, vice-president of BCCI, had said that as many as 40 companies had picked up the tender documents.

Corporates will submit bids on Thursday and BCCI will announce the winners on the same day. The base price fixed by BCCI for team ownership is $50 million for ten years.

Since IPL will work on a franchise model, the corporate will own the team and not merely be a sponsor.

BCCI is scouting for eight team owners for an equal number of teams that will play against each other in the Twenty20 format. The league will have 56 matches. Each team will include both international and domestic players.