 It seems we're already live. Good evening, Salams. Welcome to NewsClick. I'm Siddhantaani and you're watching this slightly hardcore mathematical sports. And there's some feedback that I'm getting off the YouTube live that we're doing. I don't know where that's coming from. Someone needs to mute something. Well, thank you for joining us. This afternoon, what we're doing actually, we're celebrating an early Diwali for the IPL and the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Recently in Dubai, an auction for two new franchises of the Indian Premier League was concluded and the winning bidders paid some massive amounts of money for these new teams to be based out of Lucknow and Ahmedabad. The Lucknow team has gone to the RPSG Group for well over 7000 crore rupees for a 10-year period and the Lucknow franchise has gone to the private equity venture capitalist from CVC for over 5,500 crores. Joining me on the show are Sharda Ugra, a cricket journalist who's covered pretty much every aspect of the sport in her long and illustrious career. Hi, Sharda. Hi, Siddhant. I object to being called a cricket journalist but observant. You can't help it. Huge sums of money and because we are sports journalists, our first response is to say, but this is the IPL, maybe this is the IPL going into global league terrain and it is, I think, the outcome and the normal sort of consequence of professional sport and how things are working and how things work. And so, therefore, these are the numbers we have to get ahead around and see how viable it is. Again, we are not business journalists so I was asked to go on another program. I said by Hamzana Ugra because I don't understand how this business works. But there are ways to explain it and what it does indicate to me individually is that the IPL is literally going to expand its footprint on the calendar to a much greater degree, say, maybe in five years' time, we'll see something else. And something else is going to happen in cricket. I get a feeling with the fact that you now have 10, 74 matches and a complicated-ish sort of looking structure in which they're going to run the games and so on. But it does give me an idea that something is brewing, which is going to see T20 franchise and IPL cricket pretty much. I don't want to say the word tentacles and be made to sound like I'm saying it in a negative way. But I would say the footprint of the IPL, which is the biggest T20 franchise league in the world, is going to get larger and possibly infringe on the international cricket calendar in the near future. Okay, fair enough. That's a pretty solid topic that we will get back to Sharda because in fact, being in India, Leslie, we've only looked at firstly, of course, these gigantic sums of money that really you and I probably can't even understand. But also looking at it only from a very limited perspective of T20 cricket and Indian perspective. So what Sharda is saying about the potential impact this might have on the international cricket calendar is definitely one that we should keep an eye on. But you've been reading up on this and as our resident expert, since your job description has the word editor in it, all the tough questions are going to come to you. So please tell us, what is all this money? Where is it coming from? And do the numbers even add up? I thought the toughest question that you would ask me was, I mean, number of zeros are there in 7000 crore. So, yeah, I even got prepared for that at Google. Anyways, it's a huge sum of money and business wise, how it makes sense. That's an interesting question. So I would like to start with where Sharda left off just because it's so enticing a book that I can't help but buy. What do you mean in French because it's already taken over because remember last year's World Cup was, I mean, more or less, I mean, it was scrapped because they wanted a calendar for the window for the IPL. I mean, the late IPL. I mean, the IPL that was postponed, I mean, because of COVID-19 lockdowns. Anyways, getting back into the money part of it. It's, I mean, on the outside, when you look at it, it defies logic. But then there is, I mean, if you look at comments and news that have been coming out, even from Sanjeev going to the primary investor year about how E4C is getting this money back, then there is a certain business sense that lights up but it's all up in the air but still there is a bit of a sense and it all revolves around how the game has evolved in the last two years. It's because of COVID-19, everything has gone, there is no spectators in the stadiums as I said. So everything has gone digital broadcast. It's become huge. And the market for IPL viewership has grown substantially among the cricket playing nation because the entertainment question involved and also sport action, quiz action lie onto your screens at a convenient time. So broadcast rights, it comes up again for bidding for auction in 2023. That's a year from now. So the estimate is going by the growth trajectory. The estimate is that now it is a start with the contract, five-year contract for 16,000 crores. Next time it's going to double, at least double if not more than that. So the expectation is around 35,000 crores. And that revenue is shared between the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the IPL teams equally 50-50. So 50% for PCCA and 50% comes, it's divided equally among the teams. So Sanjeev Govankar's quotes about the business ends out of it. So if you look at 7090 crores divided by 10 years, you will be paying up DCCI 709 crores. But actually in actual on paper, I mean, in practice, you won't be paying that much. You would get the revolution minus out of it. And then if you look at it, he is expecting by the second year, which is when the new media rights come in, it would be, I mean, his payment to the BCCI per year might be around 300 crores only. And beyond that, there is, there are a lot of other calculations that he has done, which we can get into subsequently in the conversation. I honestly don't think so. I'm already like my eyes are already glazing over. I'm not sure how much further you can take this. But yeah, so he has a very clear cut business idea. So does CVC Capital because CVC Capital's history in sports investment, if you look at it across sport, F1 football, they go in, make money, get out. So they also have come in with a clear idea and the valuation, I mean, the bid that they have put in is based, I mean, seemingly based on the returns that they can get in the next 10 years. And let's not forget, two times they will be bidding for broadcast rights in the course of the next 10 years. So you can imagine the growth that is expected. But then as far as sports journalists, I look at it and I see a bubble expanding and I also have a physics background. So bubbles generally tend to burst after a certain point. All right. Okay, Shadr, did you make any sense of what Leslie said and if this is sort of a, so okay, one part is that of course there's a windfall in a sense, an early Diwali for the BCCI and the IPL. But also the older teams in the fray that paid perhaps a tenth of the fee or close to a tenth of the fee for their respective franchises. Good times for them if these numbers that Leslie is referring to in terms of speculative numbers obviously, but if these numbers are anywhere close to reality. Yeah, I mean, the moment Leslie said, I mean, physics and bubble is going to burst you're like, oh God, that story is going to be really tough to cover. You know, I think all the business, if there are business journalists around this conversation, they'll probably be laughing at us trying to find our way through these numbers because Sanjeev Goyalkar's interview on CNBC TV 18 was very, very clear. It was like he was speaking from a literally like calculation calculator point at which point he was asked a question. I'm just digressing from this and I've returned to what you're saying. He was asked a question, but this is only 7% return Mr. Goyalkar. So it's kind of a valid question, you know, only 7% return is not good enough for an investment or whatever, but that let the business people deal with. The speculative numbers, I can see before you go into me go mode again. The speculative numbers that they're talking about is what the BCCI does sort of project all the time and say this is what we're going to get. And it's almost like everyone is in a state of this sort of hyper manic, you know, money generation escalating costs and you keep saying, you know, growth is not this exponential growth is not, doesn't always survive. How are you going to manage it? What's going to happen? Which is why the counterbalances that is just going to spread and it's going to become IPL and nothing else. Already you're getting cricketers sort of telling you that look, there are kids that play cricket with no interest in playing domestic cricket. They just want to play IPL, they just want an IPL contract and the numbers of cricketers that are in the fray almost. This is not like European football where you'll have leagues that are structured into three levels. You've got 20-20 teams in each of those leagues that has income to be made all the way down the line of whatever proportion or comparison that there is. Indian cricket is just one big chunk of 38 states and then these cricketers are trying to make it into these little 10 teams that are there. And so, you know, it's promising great profit and money and everything at the top end of the creamy layer like they say. But the consequences of it on the game as a whole, if no one pays attention to the back end side, I find quite disturbing in that sense. Because all this money that the BCCI talks about all the time, you don't know how it's spent. We are spending it on domestic cricket which is a random phrase they'll throw out. They're not spending it on domestic cricket. They're spending it on doing press conferences and flying business class to Dubai and making these announcements and as if they have earned this on the dint of their own labor. So 7000, 8000 crores, whatever it is. Coming to the other teams that first pitched in, they are literally going to make a killing because when it comes to, I assume the financial model is copied from American spot and franchises. There's no relegation, right? So they all are in it all the time. It's great income for them. What they do with that money, how they use it, a fraction of the share that the BCCI gives to them. And it's equal. It doesn't matter whether you invested 7000 crores or you invested whatever Rajasthan did when it was the cheapest franchise that was sold at the time. What you get from the BCCI is the same amount. So for them they'll be laughing because if these numbers that Mr. Goenka is projecting and talking about and has a businessmen's confidence in, if they turn up, it's absolutely a massive, massive gain for the smaller franchises. How that plays out in Indian cricket is another thing altogether. Yeah, fair enough. And I think no amount of business class flights can sort of, you know. This is the only problem that we have. We can't think of anything higher than one level. That's the first class. The numbers are the same here that if you start buying a plane, it won't end then. No, and people made comparisons to the Air India sale and this. Yeah, absolutely. And it is just, it's beyond each other's belief. And you keep thinking, okay, this is what the world of business is about. And as someone who works in accounts and finance, he tells me, money is just numbers. But it's like, no, it's true. None of this really exists. And this is also some of the conversations that we've been having the past couple of days that, you know, one is that it shows that there is clearly money in the market. But on the other hand, like production and the way that is happening is completely changed. So where is that money going to be spent? What's it going to be put into? Also, of course, very important questions of who controls all of this money and the direction in which it goes and how it's spent. And you were talking about labor, it's not only labor. I mean, you made a reference to sort of clubs, whether it's football clubs in Europe, or in how American sport is done. When ownership changes hands in these countries, you don't just get a piece of paper saying that you own an entity called so and so that plays in so and so league. Along with that, you get a whole set of fixed assets as well, stadiums, you get training facilities. Some of them have hotels, some of them are academies that are attached to them as well. So of course, IPL franchises have none of those in terms of fixed assets. So there's nothing real about it at all. So absolutely, your friend who was saying that money is just numbers is spot on. And although it can be argued that that is an approach that people who have money will take for others, money can be quite a real thing. But anyway, getting on from that Chhada quickly, I know there's no players union in India, but any reaction from the playing side? And actually, how does people who have a more sort of player-centric approach to the administration or the governance of cricket? How are they viewing the ways in which some of these pens can be changed? I think people don't really think about, as in the vast majority of people in Indian cricket that are earning, that think they have a chance to get to the top. All they're looking for is that top sort of level. And there's a generation of people that used to be involved in sort of spreading the gospel of cricket in a way, in making sure it stays, it keeps giving you talent and it keeps giving you things like that. That generation is now out of the picture virtually. And the new sort of, the new breed of officials, honorary, whatever you call them that have come in are just about the big time and the big money. I mean, there has recently been a story that was broken in the tribute newspaper about selectors taking bribes from players to choose their cricket selectors. That's not even talked about. It's not even a topic of interest for anybody. It's like, I feel, this is sort of the great tragedy, I think, of its time, is that rather, please go ahead and make as much money you want and buy as many planes as you want. But do look at things that are there in this, I mean, the same fellow who accused Vasim Jaffer of communalizing it and doing all kinds of things. He's the guy whose name has turned up in this scandal, but he's still around. He'll probably be going to the IPL to watch a match and sitting in the front row and all the rest of it. The way the IPL is almost like a reflection of how Indian sport at large works, in which you don't have enough events for players to play in, there's just these 70 matches a year or whatever that's it. And there is no other ladder, there's nothing beneath it, there is nothing. There's no gateway to this one or two tournaments a year. So whereas in other, in sophisticated sporting environments, they have a proper ladder and a gateway of events and weekly tournaments and seasonal events to go to. In 2020 cricket, it's the IPL, it's the Sayyar Mustakaliton and that's it. Whereas the ecosystem of Indian cricket is vast and complex but that's now seeming like no one cares about it anymore. The rest of those 2000 matches that they have a year and all that. Leslie, I know for a fact you've been looking for journalists to cover domestic cricket in India for some time and it's been a very difficult process which kind of underlines what Sharda is saying. I mean there's absolutely zero, it seems value left in covering what's happening in the sport on a wider scale beyond the IPL. Yeah, I just... Sorry, I think you're muted Leslie. We'll come back to you. Yeah, I'm back now. I thought I lost you internet connection. Am I audible now? Yeah. So you were asking about the domestic cricket scene, right? So IPL is based on a business sense, business understanding, business logic. So that's very clear in these valuations, in these options, in how investors are coming in, et cetera, et cetera. So a classic example of one of the betweeners, CVC, when they owned Formula One. So they owned Formula One from 2006 to 2017, the year period. And that's more or less overlaps with the time that I covered motorsport with interest. And I got into motorsport covering as a fan of Formula One. And I left completely distraught by the way the competition shaped into under CVC. So they clearly got in with the sense of making money and getting out of it. So 2016 when finally some voice of dissent started bubbling in the Formula One ecosystem. That was drivers who got together saying that it is not right. A lot of things were wrong. Let's not get into it. But they said money made from sports to go back into the sport. These guys are taking it out everywhere from there. So that was one of the prime accusations made by the drivers uniquely at that point. So a similar thing happens in IPL right through because you are talking about team owners, franchise owners. And what do they do for a larger, I mean, yeah, ground activations, all these things happen. But all those are related to their brand, bringing investors in, bringing local interest in, which translates to revenue. And it's not necessarily, I mean, yeah, some info happens for domestic cricket assets. But it's not necessarily helping the larger cricket sphere, the gospel of cricket like Shaza mentioned, to spread that gospel law to increase the base in a structural way. India still, in many pockets, it's not exactly a structure where in which cricket comes up. So that never happens. There's no investment in grassroots. There's no investment in cricket as a game. It's completely a business motive out there. And that is going to lead to a larger problem which BCCI is not pursuing. They're dealing with it in numbers, great. But ultimately these numbers correspond to new players, new stars emerging, new stars as in new stars who are stars in actual, not necessarily one show or one league wonders. So that is a real danger that cricket's value, cricket's value as a sport will diminish over time. And beyond that, as far as the league's growth trajectory is concerned, yeah, it's reaching smaller towns, like Lucknow or Ahmedabad, if I call Ahmedabad a small town, maybe the powers might get angry. So bringing interest around this league in smaller towns, I mean the logic that BCCI, the board puts in is that we are spreading the game and over time the league will explain itself. But if the league structure is based on a business model where investors only think in terms of returns, then who would invest in say, I mean, if arbitrarily speaking, if the league goes to IZOL, I mean, or down south, I mean, we have had experience with Kerala, ITL team in Kerala, it never really worked. So Kochi or Kori Kota, I mean, how will those activations happen? How will the investors get their returns? So they will look at that terms and not necessarily look in the terms where BCCI is trying to portray. And that is where the conflict happens and that is where this thing, the bubble that I mentioned, it's going to crack. And I can foresee that, yeah, but again, like the BCCI speculating, I'm also speculating out. Sharda, how much of this stuff, how much of these conversations, discussions, all of the points that we are discussing today, how much is actually available in the public domain? How much does the IPL, for example, share voluntarily with its fans, with its other stakeholders who are involved in it? Also from a legal point of view, I'm asking because every now and then we hear that someone has filed a PIL or a right to information application demanding some numbers from the Board of Control for Cricket in India. But how much of that applies also to the IPL and how much do they end up sharing? So how much transparency in short is there? This is actually quite a strange, curious thing that I found is that the franchises are actually much more willing to give you information by and large. They are not going to tell you, okay, if all are undeclared who are secret owners are not that kind of stuff. But if you ask them profit, loss, that kind of thing, investment, they are actually willing to tell you because they are business people who are used to responding to business queries. They don't feel insecure about being asked about these things. The other thing that Leslie was saying that they don't invest in sort of grassroots and all that because I don't think the BCCI will allow them to do that also. That's their domain. There's another word, not monopoly, there's another word, it's like you're the only thing so whatever that is. There's some poly here for what it is. So the interesting other thing is that for example, the IPL owners, I know at least two or three of them want to start, want to be part of the women's IPL as well. Because they're business people, they say, chalo, more money, more visibility to ourselves, to our brand, whatever. But the BCCI is not allowing that. So there is this kind of contradiction that's there always at work. And the franchises, Leslie will laugh now because CVC has come in and the drivers have kicked them out in F1 which is fantastic. So it was a very different kind of a conversation that you had about cricket with the franchises, the way they approached it. So what they do is their sort of outreach effort is largely camps. They'll go to, they'll send their scouts to various places to see what's happening and finding these people and doing their own independent sort of camps. So Mumbai Indians, for example, has its own ground set up in Khargarh somewhere in Mumbai. And they can have all these things happening there. They can do whatever they want is their private land, but not everything else. And it's almost like there is this tongue and this pull that is going to be there. And now that you're getting people with more and more money and more influence, I don't know how much time it'll be before they want to sort of take this over and say, listen, these guys don't know what they're doing, we know what they're doing. So they will also be, again, I see maybe, I don't know, 10-15 years down the line, there'll probably be some kind of friction about that. Because they'll say, look, we are getting you so much of your TV riots and your title sponsorship amount. It's our teams, it's our stuff that's got you here. Like we've seen happen in all of those sports that we mentioned in the West. Yeah. And so this is the thing that, they are in it for profit without a doubt. But they are also in it to expand the game in a different way that it's not been. I mean, I don't think for one, if you like KKR for instance, Coca-Cola night riders, they are particularly very good at what they put out with the media. Instead of degree and detail of information that they give. And they want to go here there and everywhere in the Northeast and find people. They are looking for the mystery bowler. Because they know that they have to play this guy for six weeks or two months or whatever of his time. And then he's fine, he's done for, he's got a decent life, he'll do whatever, he got a job in coaching him and he quit. So they can get their contribution to it, that's what it is. Which will say, okay, that's a reasonable thing that you do because you own those players or you own rights to those players for about two months. And then they go off and do whatever else they want. So they feel that that's the amount of energy we put into those two months. So that's all we need to. And it's the BCCI's role to be doing more, to be doing more and saying, okay, let's use the IPL as a ladder or an engine to work the women's game, to work somewhere else, to start mini IPLs. Which they've done in the State Association, but then there's so many controversies about the kind of owners that they allow into the State League. So there is that, and then you get into this betting angle and all kinds of things. Yeah, betting, fixing all of those things. Yeah, many things I guess that come into this chat and I guess that's why we sort of brought it up. And I don't know if we've made anything any clearer to those listening to us. But the attempt is there. So I was going to ask very quickly Sharda because we're coming to an end. We thought we'd do a hard stop at half an hour for this show. Any chances of an IPL 2 type scenario emerging? As in IPL 2 as in? A second run sort of, you know. I don't think so at the moment. Everyone wants to be part of the first run. No, fair enough. But maybe first run, maybe the same 10 franchises but with like B teams or reserve teams or under 21 teams, under 19 teams. I don't know. Yeah, the moment it gets bigger and bigger, they'll try and maybe expand it in a way. They've already infringed on international, this thing will make them irrelevant. You know, make international competition irrelevant. Look, this is what football is about. Football is not about nation versus nation. There is cricket's identity has drawn fundamentally from nation versus nation and that's what this is going to change. IPL is extremely respected around the world as the best run of the leagues as well. People compete in Sri Lanka and West Indies and England and all this and everything else is... IPL really runs best. So what do you do? Just argue with that. Yeah, no, India is rapidly emerging as the home of the best run leagues in the world. We already have the Indian Super League which is setting global standards for how football leagues should be run. And now of course the IPL is... I'm joking, I think. I think the IPL is also... I feel I'm deadly serious about the IPL but not... Alright, thanks a lot Shadda. If I may ask you for your concluding statements, last words to also sum up perhaps what all of us were trying to say on the show and then we say goodbye. So it's all about money. We have been saying that in different words right from the start. And so I'll just present a development effect and a fact which has been there ever since IPL began. Like whatever overplays, overinvest, whoever comes out, tennis super kings win. And it holds true even in this bidding process. So Goenka might have invested 7200 and 719 crores and he must be thinking that he has won something but CSK shares have gone up because of that. So they overnight so to speak. So they were trading at 135 each on Monday and after the news broke about the money that has come into the league. It almost doubled. So the market cap was 4200 crores and it jumped to 7000 plus crores, 7200 crores. So they are like probably 400 odd crores sort of being named a unicorn in their first sports unicorns. And their value is higher than the parent company Chennessymen which is around 6,644 crores. So that's the kind of expansion that this has figured and that's the kind of money should we call it greed or should we call it sense. It depends on which side of the fence we sit and talk about it but that's what drawing all these global investors, big sports businesses, big Indian businesses also to get into sport. This is what's drawing them and the question now is whether it's good for cricket as a whole. Because the world is celebrating it. Chen won congratulating sort of bangles for the money coming in as to bangles five boundaries to get that money in. So but they don't realize that ultimately what it is going to do to the global game at all. In a scenario for instance if the IPL expands to such an extent that it renders international bilateral series irrelevant. Then imagine the plight of global cricket. Imagine the growth that ICC is envisaging planning and hoping for. Imagine the Olympic entry that we are discussing. You can't enter the Olympics with a single country big billion dollar league, right? I mean or maybe I'm wrong. The United States will say we do it. That's a global footprint though. No, I agree. But all the billion dollar leagues exist in that one country, right? But I take your point Leslie and I will come to you with as usual one silly little one liner. Which is that thank you both for once again reinforcing or showing us and not just us. Even Shane won if he's watching the show how we are really all play things of alien forces. Maybe this conversation gives you a very direct sense of what those forces are and who are the aliens who are doing the controlling. So beware of market forces, friends, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys. You've been watching this IPL special on news click with Sharda Ogre, Leslie Xavier and myself. Thank you for tuning in to those who tune into the live and spread the word. Pass this on to all your friends who might be interested in the sport and conversations around it. You can also follow news click on all the usual social media platforms and channels and check out our website.