Sun TV bags Hyderabad IPL franchise

BCCI had invited bids for a new franchise through a tender floated earlier this month for 12 cities — Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Cuttack, Dharamsala, Indore, Kanpur, Kochi, Nagpur, Noida, Rajkot, Ranchi and Visakhapatnam. The highest bidder for any of one these cities was to be declared the winner, which was eventually Sun for Hyderabad.
The board claimed the sale has happened at a 100% premium to what it had earned from DCHL when it first auctioned the Hyderabad team for Rs 421 crore as part of an original tenure payment schedule in 2008. The erstwhile owner had paid Rs 42.5 crore annually for five years until financial woes hit the team earlier this year. On that count, the BCCI does end up earning double the amount from Sun as compared to what DCHL was contracted to pay until 2017. Still, the latest valuation benchmark — the first such instance after IPL founder Lalit Modi’s controversial ouster from the cricket board — pales in comparison with what Sahara is paying for the Pune team. In fact, the latest deal lowers team valuations by almost 100%.
Brand Finance, a UK-based intangible asset valuation consultancy, which has been tracking the IPL since 2009, said in a report earlier this year that the league’s value fell from $4.13 billion in 2010 to $2.92 billion this year. The combined value of all the franchisees also came down to $321.12 million from $355.22 million in 2011, it said.