More than 15 entities are bidding for five franchises of the Women's Indian Premier League (WIPL), which is slated to be held in March.
The bids for the WIPL teams will be submitted on January 25 and winners will be announced the same day.
Along with franchise owners of men's IPL, other corporates in the fray include Haldiram's, Apollo Pipes, Shriram Finance, Adani Group, Torrent, Kotak, JK Cement, and Accord Distillery.
From the men's franchise owners, Chennai Super Kings, Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans will not be bidding for WIPL teams. According to a report, Gujarat Titans is currently more focused on men's IPL as it is a new team. All other seven owners of men's IPL teams will bid for the WIPL franchises.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) invited bids in January to own and operate a team in the WIPL. As many as 33 bid documents went on sale for the five WIPL franchises.
Estimated value
It is estimated that bidding for WIPL teams will be in the range of Rs 800 to Rs 1,200 crore per franchise. Some estimates suggest that looking at the recent media rights auction of WIPL, the bids for franchises could start from the base of Rs 350 crore per franchise for 10 years and increase by 25-40 percent on the base. Like the media rights, BCCI has not set a base for franchise bidding tender.
The cricket board on January 16 made Viacom18 the official broadcaster of WIPL with the company winning both TV and digital rights of the league for a period of five years. The deal is valued at Rs 951 crore, which takes the per-match value at Rs 7.09 crore for the next 5 years (2023-27).
Those bidding for WIPL teams should have a net worth of Rs 1,000 crore, according to the tender document. Bids will be accepted for a 10-year period.
The five franchise-based teams will play a total of 22 matches with the league being played for a duration of 25 days. Each team will have a maximum of 18 players in the squad, including six foreign players. Each team will play each other twice and the top team in the league will directly qualify for the final. The other finalist will be decided by an eliminator match between the second- and third-placed teams. The tournament is likely to start by March 6 -7 and conclude by around March 22 before the start of the men's IPL on March 26.
A day before the franchise auction of WIPL teams, BCCI Secretary Jay Shah tweeted that on National Girl Child Day they are taking a step forward towards a more inclusive future as BCCI opens bids for the upcoming Women's T20 League. "A day to re-shape our society and make sports a viable career choice for all the women of India," he said.
IPL comparison
BCCI is expecting to earn over Rs 1,000 crore from the sale of each franchise with the total value estimated to be in the range of Rs 6,000-8,000 crore. On the estimated value of overall WIPL in its first season, Santosh N, Managing Partner, D and P Advisory said looking at the media rights which is a significant portion of revenue, WIPL is less than 5 percent of men's IPL.
"WIPL is a startup and men's IPL is a 15-year-old property. Also, BCCI getting paid for WIPL's media rights means a lot because many not so well established leagues globally in the past had to pay broadcasters to air the leagues. And if media rights for the first 10 seasons of IPL are compared then there were 60 matches per season and 600 matches for 10 seasons. It was $1 billion which meant that BCCI got Rs 9 crore per match for the first 10 seasons. WIPL is getting Rs 7 crore. So it is a good start," he added.
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