A big change in the IPL sponsorship has been finalized on January 11th by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Title sponsors Vivo had pulled out of the remainder of their contract, and the new title sponsor will be the Tata company, confirmed by Cricbuzz.
This massive decision was taken at the board’s Governing Council meeting of the IPL on Tuesday. After the conclusion of the meeting, Brijesh Patel, the IPL chairman, confirmed this change in the title sponsors.
“Vivo has exited and the Tatas will be title sponsors,” Patel told Cricbuzz.
Vivo, a Chinese technology company, had bagged the title rights at a cost of INR 440 crore a year in 2018. However, they had paused the deal for a year in 2020 amid the Indo-China diplomatic standoff when the rights were transferred to Dream 11 before they returned in 2021.
The original 5-year deal was up to the 2020 season and it got extended till 2023 because of the one-year break. Vivo had a couple of years left in its sponsorship deal with the IPL and during this period before they pulled out completely.
Tata is now the main sponsor for the 2022 and 2023 seasons; the league will now be called Tata IPL.
Further in the meeting, the board also approved the Letter of Intent to be issued to CVC Capital, whose acquisition of the Ahmedabad franchise has been under a cloud for the last couple of months.
“The Governing Council has approved the CVC acquisition of the Ahmedabad team and we will issue the LoI today (January 11),” he further said.
Now, both Ahmedabad and Lucknow franchises have to decide and announce their top three picks from the available players. The mega auction will be in Bangalore on February 12 and 13.
Also, the BCCI has pondered over staging the entire IPL 2022 in Maharashtra in a bio bubble environment in light of the increasing number of Covid-19 cases in India.
“On January 5, Hemang Amin (BCCI’s interim CEO and the Chief Operating Officer of the IPL) approached Vijay Patil (MCA president) in this regard, on the side lines of the MCA’s Apex Council meeting. Subsequently, a few days later, Amin and Patil met Sharad Pawar at the NCP supremo’s residence. Pawar has given his green signal to the BCCI’s proposal,” a source told Times of India.
