| MUMBAI:
The Indian Premier League (IPL), which was to announce its two new franchises
on Sunday, has scrapped the existing tender amidst objection from potential bidders
to stringent financial clauses. The
revised tender will now be floated on 9 March and opened on 21 March in Chennai,
delaying the announcement of the new IPL franchises by two weeks.
A significant amendment in the new tender will be the dropping of the clause that
required bidders to have a net worth of $1 billion.
Another
change is to reduce the advance guarantee from $100 million to a $10 million “performance
guarantee”, to be submitted 24 hours in advance of the bid being opened.
Winning bidders will then pay 10 per cent of their bid within 48 hours. In the
old tender, the IPL’s governing council had the discretion to seek from the
winning bidder 100 per cent of the amount within a minimum time-frame. The
IPL governing council, which met here on Sunday, did not open the existing tenders
and returned them to the bidders. "The
IPL Governing Council has cancelled the current ITT process and will issue a new
document with revised conditions this week. The new ITT document will have some
new conditions which the IPL Governing Council believes will benefit the IPL and
Indian cricket in the long term,” IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi
said, while addressing a press conference. “The relaxation (of the clauses)
was because we received letters from many, many companies who had expressed interest
but said that the $1 billion net worth criterion (was one) which owners of the
existing franchises were not asked for earlier." Sources
indicate that the IPL had received only three bids. This included a consortium
of Videocon owner Venugopal Dhoot, the Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan, Kareena
Kappor and her sister Karisma and Pune's Panchshil group of industries who were
bidding from Pune; the Adani Group for Ahmedabad; and the Jaypee Group from an
undisclosed venue. The
cities in the fray are Pune, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kanpur, Dharamsala, Vizag, Rajkot,
Cuttack, Baroda, Kochi, Indore and Gwalior. The
base price remains at $225 million, over four times the value set in January 2008
when the original eight franchises were auctioned. | 
