BCCI. For decades, the acronym stood for a staid-sounding Board of Control for Cricket in India. With the spectacular unveiling of the Indian Premier League, soon people may rename it BBCI. Business. Bollywood. Cricket and India.

It was always on the cards that one day the four most powerful forces would come together to create a behemoth that would stun the world. That heady cocktail was unleashed on January 24 in Mumbai when the bids for the Twenty20 cricket league was announced.

India’s two richest brothers Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani have been involved in many a boardroom battle. Here, they had to contend with many others including Vijay Mallya, Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla, Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia, Mohit Burman and Karan Paul to bag franchises for eight teams that were up for grabs.
BCCI had set a base price of US $400 million (apprx Rs1,570 crore) - a minimum of US $50 million for each city team for a decade. The auctioning reached a frenetic pitch, at the end of which BCCI had netted $723.6 million. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries took Mumbai team for Rs441 crore, Mallya’s UB Group bagged Bangalore for Rs440 crore and King Khan’s company Red Chillies forked out Rs296 crore for Kolkata.

Together with TV rights already sold, BCCI was assured of being richer by $1,750 million (around Rs 7,000 crore) before anyone rolled his shoulder for the first ball in the IPL, which is scheduled to be held under floodlights in eight cities across India for 45 days from April 18.

This is just the beginning. The bidding for top-notch players will begin soon and each player is expected to earn a minimum of Rs1-2 crore per season as guarantee money. IPL has already signed up a number of foreign players including Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Stephen Fleming. Indian stars like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid will be called “icon players” and can play only for their respective cities. They will be the highest paid players in the league and will, therefore, not be “auctioned.”

Loosely modelled after the European football and the American basketball, which are multi-billion dollar businesses with huge fan following, IPL may eventually get there, if properly nurtured.

All the hustle and bustle around this much-hyped project naturally gives rise to a few questions that beg to be answered. Will IPL change the face of cricket in India and abroad? Will it sustain its stupendous start? Is the IPL going to be really so big as to match EPL and NBA or is this a gigantic bubble waiting to burst? What is making the richest Indian, a Bollywood superstar and media moguls alike to invest in a game whose appeal doesn’t go beyond a handful of nations? Are they moved by their business acumen or is it a pure gamble?

We don't have to go deep to answer the first question. The lure of IPL has become so huge that
Australian skipper Ricky Ponting, no less, openly criticised Cricket Australia for putting hurdles on their way to playing in the lucrative league. It is a bit premature to say whether the tussle between players and their national boards will lead to a Kerry Packer-like situation -- a scenario certainly not in the best interests of world cricket  -- but sooner than later the cricket boards around the world will have to fall in line.

That means the ICC will have to redraw its Future Tours’ Programme (anyway the 10-year fixture was never followed strictly) making sure that their top players are available for their respective national assignments without affecting their IPL schedule.

 BCCI vice-president Lalit Modi, the brain behind IPL, has little doubt that the league will spell a lot of good for both India and world cricket. “It will rejuvenate the game not just at the international level, but help our domestic cricket as well,” says Modi. “One of the biggest gains of IPL is that with the involvement of professional organisations and business houses, it will usher in professionalism in BCCI and state associations. Not to speak of the improvement in the infrastructure facilities,” he adds.

Point noted Mr Modi. But the initial economics of IPL notwithstanding, how is it going to sustain its growth? To give the picture in a nutshell, the investors apart from paying 10 per cent of their franchise bid per year for the next ten years, the annual cost to run an IPL campaign is expected to be in the range of Rs 40-50 crore.

“I don't think anybody is expecting profit in the initial few years. What you have to look at is this is an asset for life,” remarks Modi. And Modi’s statement is not without logic. “We are hoping it would be as big as the EPL, if not bigger. If EPL can be so successful with an 18-million fan base, imagine what IPL could become with the kind of following we will have,” he reasons.

While rubbishing the claims that IPL was in response to Zee-backed Indian Cricket League, Modi says: “We had proposed this plan some 10 years ago, but some committee members then sabotaged it. Unlike the ICL, which has fallen flat on its face, IPL is a well-thought, well-planned project.” 

The success of Twenty20 World Cup, too, has given the IPL (a T20 tournament for 45 days) mandarins greater hope. “Look at the interest the T20 has generated among the followers. Even if you looked at the viewership of non-India matches during T20 World Cup, it was tremendous,” notes Modi.
The key, however, lies in creating city-based fans, which is unheard of in cricket in India.

Money, money, money...

Who is lining up with whom ?

* Reliance Industries -- Mumbai; UB Group -- Bangalore; Deccan Chronicle -- Hyderabad; India Cements -- Chennai; GMR Holdings -- Delhi; Wadia-Zinta-Burman-Paul -- Chandigarh; Red Chillies Entertainment -- Kolkata; Emerging Media Consortium -- Jaipur

How much BCCI will earn?

* The bidders pay only 10 per cent of the price they offered to buy each team, which means Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group needs to pay a little over Rs36 crore for the first year, with similar amounts for the next 10 years.

* Of the total Rs 2,894 crore bid amount for the eight teams, the board will get about Rs288 crore each year.

* The Board also earns money raised from the sale of TV rights (Rs 4,000 crore put up by Sony and World Sports Group). That amount is also to be paid over 10 years.

How do the franchisees make money?

* Of the amount raised as TV rights each year, approximately 60 percent is distributed among the eight franchise owners as their income from TV rights.

* The franchisee also gets gate collection money; can raise further revenue from logos on T-shirts,
merchandising and other promotions.

How much do teams earn?

* The tournament, involving teams based in eight cities, will be held in eight cities under floodlights for 44 days beginning April 18. The prize money will be approximately Rs 16 crore.

* Each team will play 14 matches, seven at home and seven away.

What’s in it for the players?

* The auction money may range from a few lakhs to a few crores. For example the Icon Players -- Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh -- will get 10 to 15 per cent more than the other highest paid players.

*  Minimum salary to be paid for a player around Rs 8 lakh per year with a contract of minimum of three years. The salary can shoot up to Rs 1.6 crore (Shane Warne’s reported fee).  

*  Even Anil Kumble, who has retired from the shorter version of the game, will get around Rs 1 crore. Harbhajan Singh too will cost around while Irfan Pathan will be cheaper by around Rs 30 lakh. The T20 stars like Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag will cost a neat Rs 80 lakh.

* Players can also earn from individual endorsements deals.