From Breakingviews - Cricket rights will bowl India Inc a new line-up
Cricket - Third One Day International - South Africa v India - Newlands Cricket Ground, Cape Town, South Africa - January 23, 2022 India's Virat Kohli in action REUTERS/Sumaya Hisham - UP1EI1N11VMSLMUMBAI, June 10 - Few major sporting tournaments in the world are dominated by tycoons and companies as much as Indian Premier League cricket. This weekend’s auction of the competition’s broadcast rights for the next five years could fetch as much as $6.
Star India paid in 2017. That will probably end up multiplying the parallels between the league and corporate India too. The 15-year-old IPL is a flashy affair played between 10 teams during the hottest two months of the year in a country where star player salaries are starting to rival the English soccer Premier League, on a pro-rata basis. A crowd of some 100,000 people turned out for the final in late May at the Narendra Modi Stadium, named after the prime minister. They saw European buyout firm CVC’s new team, the Gujarat Titans, beat the Rajasthan Royals to win the title in its debut season.
CVC’s entry into the game makes the IPL an uncanny reflection of the changing face of corporate India: Buyout firms are finding more opportunities, indebted tycoons are losing their prize assets, Chinese capital is unwelcome, and a few billionaires are gaining extraordinary power at the expense of competition.