IPL franchises will recover their money: Modi

IPL franchises will recover their money: Modi
New Delhi: Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi did not expect Sunday's bidding to generate an amount so staggering but he assured the franchise owners that there is no reason why they cannot make a profit.

Sahara ($370 million) and Rendezvous ($333.33 million) paid a total of $703 million — nearly Rs. 3,235 crore — to bag the Pune and Kochi franchises respectively and the amount is bigger than the collective worth of Rs. 2,840 crore of the original eight franchises.

‘Surprised'

“I was indeed a little bit surprised by the amount. Honestly speaking, I thought the winning bid would be $300-320 million. So it was $40-50 million higher than my expectation. The bidders must have done their numbers well,” Modi said.

He, however, assured that the franchisees can make enough money out of the league.

“We are just two years old and every team that has been run well must be making profit. If not, they are probably marginally short of making profit,” he told the CNN-IBN channel.

Buttressing his case, Modi said, “Sports is one of the leading businesses of the world today. English Premier League, NFL, NBA, Spanish League, Bundesliga — these capture the imagination of the youth and the people. Build a strong base and your future is defined.

“We already have some pluses. Across the world, the major cost is of infrastructure and players' salary. Here you get the stadium pretty much free and there is a cap on players' salary as well,” Modi said.

“Merchandising and ticketing are two other revenue sources. The ticketing revenue of all teams have gone up six-seven fold. With YouTube and Google in the picture, fan base is increasing across the world,” Modi added.

With 10 teams in the fray, IPL, from its fourth season, will feature 94 matches and Modi felt the players can handle this much workload.

“See, you have 300 matches in IPL every season. I don't see any fatigue factor. Currently every team plays 14 matches, they will play 18 from next year. We are cutting down on the travelling. It's travelling which is the biggest issue, not playing matches,” Modi justified.

The IPL mastermind said time is not far when the Twenty20 league would be seen at par with NBA or NFL.
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