Severing all ties with the game of cricket after being “let down” by the BCCI, the Subroto Roy-owned Sahara Group has decided to pull out as sponsors, both for Team India and the IPL league matches (it owns the Pune Warriors team). The Group made the announcement just before the auctioning of players for IPL's fifth edition.
Addressing a press conference in Mumbai, Mr Subroto Roy, Chairman, Sahara Group, said: “It would be tough to have a reconciliation with the BCCI and we are waiting to hear from them. We are willing to take on the legal ramifications but my main concern is that our IPL team players should be able to play this year and we expect the BCCI to figure out a way of how they can help our players.”
In the past 10 years, Mr Roy said that his Sahara Group had spent almost Rs 700 crore on cricket, excluding the IPL sponsorship. “We also lost nearly 25 per cent of the sponsorship money spent on IPL last year as the number of matches got reduced,” he added. It is estimated that the BCCI will incur a loss of Rs 1,700 crore as a result of Sahara pulling out of cricket sponsorships, as the latter was supposed to pay Rs 3.5 crore per match (for displaying its logo on the Team India jerseys).
For the Team India sponsorship, Sahara has committed to continue making sponsorship payments for the next 3-4 months to give BCCI enough time to find another sponsor.
The funds eased out of cricket will be invested in setting up 20 sports promotion centres, with an international standard sports academy. Besides, Rs 10 crore will be provided every year for underprivileged sports achievers, past and present, along with a host of other social development initiatives, the group said in a statement.
The Sahara Group has outlined several instances in the past when it had been let down by the BCCI. In a statement, it said its first attempt at entry into IPL was thwarted in 2008 “on the whims and fancies of BCCI” where its bid was not even opened and its application denied on a “technicality”.
Then, when Sahara made its $370-million bid for the Pune Warriors team, it was on the basis of information provided by the BCCI that there would be 94 matches played. Despite the number of matches played being reduced to 74, neither Sahara nor the other new IPL side, Kochi Tuskers Kerala, were allowed a recalibration of the payment commitment.
Repeated requests by the Sahara group for an open auction of all players in IPL 4, so that there was a level playing field for all teams, were also turned down.
Bending the rules
The request that Sahara be allowed to add the cost of the injured Yuvraj Singh to the allowable bidding limit of $2 million for Saturday's player auction was denied. Sahara cited a precedent during last year's Champion's League tournament, where Mumbai Indians had a lot of injured players and were allowed to “break the rules” and take one extra foreign player, as an example of the selective manner in which the IPL governing council applied the rule-book.