The owners of Manchester United Football Club, the Glazer family, have reportedly shown interest in one of the two new Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises.
As per a Times of India report, the Invitation to Tender (ITT) documents have been picked up by the US-based owners of Manchester United from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). This could be for the purchase of the new IPL teams to feature in the upcoming season of the overtly famous domestic cricket tournament.
While BCCI does allow foreign companies to own a team in IPL, they will have to set up a company in India to get their bid through. However, it is still not known if Glazers have picked up the document to make a formal bid to own a franchise.
Explaining the process, those tracking developments in a statement to the media said, “A lot of people usually pick these tender documents to study and gather the information that tends to be otherwise very useful from a larger industry perspective.”
“For instance, buying a bid document will tell me more about what the BCCI is planning next, in terms of the league expansion, etc. For instance, if Disney has bought the tender document to buy the franchise, it doesn’t mean Disney is interested in owning a franchise. It will study the document because it has to plan its own media rights landscape,” the report said further.
Sources in the know while speaking with ANI hinted at BCCI extending deadlines for the Glazers. Confirming interest shown by the Manchester Uniter owners, the source said, “Well yes, it is true that they have shown interest and that may be one of the reasons why the dateline was extended by BCCI.”
The deadline to purchase the ITT document was set as October 20.
Interestingly, there are several criteria for companies to be eligible for the bid. One of them being, the bidders have to submit an average turnover of Rs. 3000 crore or a net worth of Rs. 2500 crore.
Some others to have picked up the ITT document include Adani Group, Torrent Pharma, Aurobindo Pharma, RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, Hindustan Times Media, Jindal Steel (led by Naveen Jindal), entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala and three private equity players.
Additionally, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Guwahati, Cuttack, Indore, and Dharamsala are said to be the leading contenders as new home teams for IPL 2022.
