Deciding to offshore the second season of the Indian Premier League, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) also hastily sanctioned an “imprest” corpus of $10 million (Rs 50 crore) for IPL’s overseas outing and prepared to raise it to thrice that amount.
Speaking to ‘The Indian Express’, BCCI Treasurer M P Pandove said this was the first instalment of foreign exchange disbursal to IPL’s account and the amount could well go up to $30 million. “This is the working capital we have given the IPL for starting their accounts for the year. If need be, we will release $10 million once more or even twice,” he said.
Critical to the ongoing negotiations between IPL and its teams is just who will bear the extra burden of business class travel for the players, hotel bills and the substantial fee for booking stadia. And who will offset losses should ticket sales not match the numbers calculated when the tournament was to be played at home.
While some BCCI officials told The Indian Express that the teams had been “assured” yesterday that a “substantial” part of the expenses on travel and hospitality will be borne by the IPL, Pandove said the subject will be given “conscious consideration” at a later stage — well before IPL-2 kicks off.
“At present, we are all calculating what the cost of hosting the tournament abroad will be. Once that calculation is done, only then we can think of sharing costs,” the BCCI Treasurer said. “Suppose after doing the calculations, the teams feel the escalated costs are making their investment in the tournament unviable, at that stage we will give their pleas a conscious consideration.”
BCCI officials also admitted that the dramatic decision to host the IPL-2 abroad might, eventually result in state associations, too, getting a reduced share of the commercial pie. In practice, the BCCI distributes 70% of its commercial revenue every year to state associations and retains the remaining 30%.
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