After disastrous performances by the Indian team in England and Australia, the popularity of the sport has certainly taken a hit. The TRPs have gone down to very low levels causing deep concern in the sponsorship business. The Sahara group has shaken its long standing partnership with BCCI on various commercial issues. The IPL auction conducted on 4th February has sold only 25 players out of available 144. The balance players are now put up for online auction, like bride and bridegroom’s profiles on shaadi.com.
If the same trend continues, here is a scenario of what would happen during the grand IPL auction in 2015.
New Corporate owners of teams
First of all, there are no big names like Mallyas and Ambanis participating in the auction. There are lots of new faces. They are from various businesses as follows:
Scrap dealer from Ludhiana
Garment retailer from Coimbatore
Flour mill owner from Aurangabad
Caterer from Bhopal, and
Beedi manufacturer from Yavatmal etc.
The players would be far too disappointed over the turnout at this auction. And the auction starts with Rs. 1000/-. The maximum price for an Indian player was Rs. 74,500/-. The costliest foreign player would cost Rs. 97,350/-.
New Bollywood owners of teams
There shall not be any big names from Bollywood like SRK, Shilpa Shetty and Preity Zinta vying to own a team. The people from Bollywood present there shall be Ravikishan, Himesh Reshamiya, Rakhi Sawant, Rajpal Yadav, Kay Kay Menon etc.
The team owners from Bollywood would put following conditions:
The advts shown during the overs break shall feature them or their movies.
The cheer girls shall dance on the songs from their films only.
The prizes shall be distributed by them whenever their team wins a match.
There would be a combined dance performance by all of them on the eve of inaugural function and the finals.
During the match in progress, the cameras would be focused on them at least 15 times.
Revised Conditions by the Sponsors
And finally the sponsors shall have the following conditions:
Their logos shall be displayed on bats in bold letters. So, expect to see some logos like ‘Ganesh Beedi’, ‘Zandu balm’, or ‘Itch Guard’, or ‘Vagh Bakri Chai’ on the bats.
Their product shall be made available at stalls within the stadium on discount.
Part of the fee shall be paid to the teams / players by way of their products. So, at the end of tournament, players can reach home with cartons of ointments, tea bags, soaps, Beedis and tooth paste.
TV telecast rights
With major channels backing out the telecasting due to TRP issues, the ones that will win the rights would be like Aastha channel, Sadhana channel, Shraddha channel etc. They would get panel experts comprising of Baba Ramdev, Asaram Bapu, Sudhanshu Majaraj, Murari Bapu etc on the match analysis.
So, we can expect some comments like ‘Bat ka ball se Milan hone jaroori hai…’; ‘Saans dheere se lekar shot maro.. .’; ‘man ko ekaagra karake catch pakado…’ etc.
Also, while the match is in progress, we will see a small window on top left corner of the TV screen in which Baba Ramdev will be seen vigorously doing Kapal Bhanti and Anulom Vilom Pranayam. During the innings break, there would be a special fancy dress show by Baba Ramdev in which he will also demonstrate his high jump skills and also give a brief lecture on Kaala Dhan.
General Terms and Conditions
Considering that the players are not performing consistently every time, the new team owners shall put following terms and conditions for players:
Every batsman would get 25% of the contract amount for playing, 25% for scoring at least 20 runs and balance 50% for scoring 50 runs or more.
Every bowler would get 25% of the contract amount for playing, 25% for taking at least two wickets and balance 50% for taking 5 or more wickets.
Every catch miss would result in penalty of 5% of match fees.
Every misfield resulting in 4 would result in penalty of 5% of match fees.
The team uniform and the kit shall be issued only once for three tournaments.
The travel shall be strictly through second AC in trains. Meals included.
The taxi fare from stations to the hotels shall be reimbursed at actual.
And in faraway land Lalit Modi would be laughing and saying to himself… too much is too bad..!
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