India's cricket board didn't get any bids for the team kit sponsor and official merchandising partner rights and now plans to set a new deadline, citing "technical reasons," a source told Economic Times of India (ET).
"Some international companies that were keen to pick up the rights could not get approval from their headquarters within the stipulated time. So the board is working on extending the deadline and all interested parties will be intimated soon," one person said.
Adidas and Puma were the only international sportswear companies that had shown interest in bidding for the rights. Dream Sports (parent company of Dream11 and FanCode), Universal Sportsbiz (owner of Wrogn) and The Walt Disney Company had also picked up the tender documents.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India had on August 3 called for bids to be submitted between 10 am and 11 am on September 1.
An email query sent to BCCI interim CEO Hemang Amin remained unanswered. Amin and BCCI president Sourav Ganguly did not respond to ET's calls and text messages. The BCCI initiated the tender for the rights after Nike decided to end its partnership after 14 years. ET first reported on June 26 that Team India may lose the Nike logo because of a tussle over contract renewal.
Nike did not pick up the tender documents this time. The sportswear company's current four-year deal with BCCI, ending in September, was worth Rs 370 crore ($49.3m), including Rs 30 crore ($4m) as royalty fee for merchandising rights.
For the new three-year rights cycle, BCCI set Rs 8 crore ($1.07m) as the base price for the merchandise partner and Rs 65 lakh ($86k) per match for kit sponsorship. During the next three years, the Indian cricket team is supposed to play 142 matches.
At the base price, a bidder would have to shell out a minimum of Rs 116.3 crore ($15.5m) over the next three years, apart from supplying over 30,000 kits per year to the BCCI.
A BCCI official said that the board was expecting both Adidas and Puma to bid aggressively for the rights.
John Stephenson
john@cricketinvestor.co.uk
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