Sunday, March 21, 2010

IPL gets its two new franchises


The suspense over the two new IPL teams is finally over as Sahara Adventure Sports (Pune) and Rendevous Sports Ltd ( Kochi ) are set to join the cash-awash event from 2011 season.

The highest bid was that of Sahara Adventure Sports Ltd for Ahmedabad, Nagpur and Pune for $370 million and they chose Pune, which received three bids. The second highest was Rendevous Sports Ltd who bid $333.33 million for Kochi .

The process was to be completed on March 7 but was postponed by two weeks after the bidders and the BCCI objected to stiff financial clauses.

Earlier, Groups with a net worth of $1 billion were allowed to be part of the process and that too with a bank guarantee of $100 million.

The successful bidders will be given 48 hours to pay 10 per cent of their bid price.

The IPL will now feature 10 teams and - if the current format is retained - a total of 94 games, from the existing 60. After the first season in 2008, the league has already expanded its reach to other centres such as Cuttack, Ahmedabad, Nagpur and Dharamsala.

Apart from the two successful bidders, other groups which took part in the bidding were Adani Groups, VC Digital Solution (Videocon) and a Pune consortium.

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