Indian Cricket League
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[edit] Indian Cricket League
[edit] New professional cricket League formed in India
On Tuesday, 3rd April, 2007, Zee Telefilms (part of Subhash Chandra promoted Essel Group) announced [1] that it would be partner with infrastructure major IL&FS to create a new ambitious cricket league, Indian Cricket League (ICL) [2]. This league will have a prize money of $ 1 million for the winner. ICL is be set up with a Rs 100-crore corpus, ICL would initially comprise six teams to be expanded to 16 in three years. Which may make it the richest professional league in the country with an annual prize purse of $1 million (Rs 4.4 crore). ICL has already signed a number of major players but is unwilling to reveal names.
[edit] League Structure
Each team will be coached by a former India player and would comprise four international, two Indian and eight budding domestic players. Essel Group is also planning to set up cricket academies all over the country. BCCI has been assured that it is free to draw from ICL's talent pool. The league will be functional by July-August and will start with 20:20 format matches in the run-up to the 20:20 World Cup in September 2007.
[edit] Reasons for creation
Several factors have played a role in formulation of a cricket league which may run in parallel to the official Indian cricket control body, BCCI.
[edit] India's poor performance in ICCI Cricket World Cup 2007
Essel group has sought to capitalize on the dissapontment of Indian cricket fans with the poor performance of their cricket team in the World cup. Indian team's failure in world cup has led to huge financial losses to TV broadcasters, advertisers, sponsors and travel & tour operators. But more importantly it had brought disappointment to a nation of millions of fanatical cricket fans.
The question of 'why can't a nation of 1 billion with millions of cricket players produce even a reasonably competent team' has been hotly debated across newspapers and news channels. One of the answers which has gained wide acceptance is that the BCCI, the cricket control body of India, has failed miserably in it's job and needs a major overhaul in it's working and organization. Millions of Indian fans who had hero-worshipped their cricket team are finding BCCI, with its' image already mired with scandals, favoritism and political influence an easy target to blame for this debacle.
[edit] Zee Telefilms desire to create sports content
The league could help the country develop talent, as well as provide lucrative sports programming for Essel Group for Zee Telefilms, which lost out on the rights to broadcast all BCCI-sanctioned cricket matches in India through 2011.
In fact Essel Group had launched Zee Sports earlier with the anticipation of bagging the BCCI telecast rights in 2006. This was followed by Zee acquiring 50 percent in Ten Sports in November 2006 for Rs 257 crore. This gave the company a few international cricket rights – West Indies, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. But these 5-year rights were at their fag end.
Cricket played in India generates Rs 1,000 crore in advertising and subscription revenue and Subhash Chandra has been acutely aware of his company missing out on the lucrative cricket pie.
During his battle with BCCI and ESPN Star Sports for the 5-year telecast rights in August-September 2004 in the Bombay High Court, Chandra was present every day for the hearings. Despite Zee bidding the highest at $307 million, BCCI and its then wily president Jagmohan Dalmiya managed to deny him the rights.
The pain of denial has been with Chandra since 2000 when the ICC World Cup rights were sold to NewsCorp’s Global Cricket Corporation (GCC) for $550mn despite Zee bidding the highest at $650mn. Reason: Zee did not have sufficient sports marketing experience.
In August 2005, Zee again emerged frontrunner with a pitch of over $340mn while ESPN Star Sports, the other principal contender, is believed to have offered around $325mn. BCCI took the stance that Zee was not qualified as a specialist broadcaster and refused to consider Zee’s proposal. The matter expectedly went to court and Doordarshan emerged the beneficiary.
Chandra then tried the political route too and supported Sharad Pawar’s candidature as BCCI president against Dalmiya. Pawar emerged victorious but not Chandra. In the last round of bidding in February, last year, it was Nimbus who bagged BCCI’s telecast rights till 2011 for $613 mn with Zee trailing at $513 mn.
Since there was a Zee-Nimbus alliance before the bidding, media pundits thought Nimbus’ bid was a Zee front. But Nimbus chose to go its own way and launched its own sports network – Neo Sports.
[edit] Contention With BCCI
BCCI's official responce is still awaited.
