Adding to the current spate of controversies surrounding the IPL, the Sahara Group-owned Pune Warriors on Tuesday pulled out from the cricketing extravaganza. It said this was due to the decision of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to revoke its bank guarantee and pointed at the lack of an arbitration process to reduce its franchisee fee.
In a statement, the company said, “We would not keep the IPL franchisee even if the entire franchisee fee was waived. It is a firm and final decision of Sahara to withdraw from IPL.”
It also said that it will continue as the Indian cricket team’s sponsor only up to December 2013, and has given time to BCCI to get the new sponsorship in place from January 2014.
Sahara India said it had bid Rs 1,700 crore for the IPL franchise in 2010 on the basis of revenue calculation on 94 matches, but had got only 64 matches. The company said it had earlier requested BCCI to reduce the bid price proportionately for a viable IPL proposition and said it had been requesting BCCI for arbitration since June 2011, but the company claimed that the BCCI turned a “deaf ear”.
In February 2012, too, Sahara India had decided to withdraw from IPL.