In the end, only two players, Sahara Group and Bharti Airtel, submitted bids for the right to sponsor the Indian team. Both Sahara, the existing sponsors, and Airtel bought the tender document at the last possible minute before the submission deadline, and Cricinfo has learnt both companies have submitted the mandatory Rs 50 crore (US$10.7 million) deposit required by the BCCI.
The Indian board issued the tender on Monday inviting companies to bid for the rights, whose tenure is three-and-a-half years beginning July 1, 2010. Other companies in the fray included the ADA Group (ADAG), consumer electronics major Videocon, Delhi-based Monnet-Ispat, sports broadcaster Nimbus, which owns the rights to matches played in India, and advertising firm Percept.
A source close to Nimbus said the broadcaster was approached by ADAG on Saturday morning, as its top brass was reluctant to commit as much as Rs 400 crore (US$ 85.6m) on its own. Nimbus, meanwhile, was trying to put together a consortium to bid for the rights, but was unable to pull it off due to the short time-span - less than a week - between the date the tender was released and the date the bids were submitted. "They released the tender on Monday and all the bids need to go in by Saturday, which is just about four working days by the time the tender was in hand. That is not very easy to work out when you are trying to get people to commit to Rs 400 crore."
It was reported widely that the BCCI was against consortiums bidding for the rights, but one of the interested players, who was among the first to pick the document, said that the board never had any issues there. "They had sent a clarification stating they did not want any marketing agencies to be part [of the consortium]."
The BCCI has set a base price of Rs 2.5 crore per match for a three-and-a-half year period, during which India will be playing between 144 and 167 matches, depending on how far the team progresses in the ICC tournaments.Read more...
Courtesy: www.cricinfo.com
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