The bid by CVC Capital Partners, which was successful in acquiring an Indian Premier League franchise will now be investigated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) after the owners of the Ahmedabad franchise developed links to betting companies.
The BCCI is reported to set a panel that will assess the situation. However, it is not expected that the deal will be shown a red light. CVC’s bid is too gigantic to be called off.
The owners of the Ahmedabad franchise, CVC Capitals placed a bid of INR 5625 crores for the Ahmedabad franchise and will see the team play in the upcoming IPL season.
Betting is completely banned in India and history suggests that cricket should be kept miles away from it. The acquisition of the franchise is not yet completely done and BCCI with the special body are in an exchange on the matter.
According to the reports, the board has allocated time until December 31 to have due diligence on the CVC Group. Tipico and Sisal are the two betting organizations in their ‘portfolio companies’ list.
Later this week, the BCCI will also finalise the upcoming tender for global media rights for 2023 onwards. This deal will again shatter a few records on its way to see revenues increase by a huge margin.
CVC agreed to pay $760m over 10 years for the new IPL team. The concerns were interrogated after Lalit Modi, the founder of the IPL, questioned CVC’s appropriateness as a team owner on Twitter.