The Indian Premier League has unveiled two new teams for the Twenty20 competition, with the Lucknow and Ahmedabad franchises sold for a combined $2.4 billion.
The RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, which owned the now-defunct Pune franchise for two IPL campaigns, bid $1.3 billion for the Lucknow outfit while Irelia Company Pte. Ltd. (CVC Capital Partners) bid a little over $1 billion for the Ahmedabad side.
Both teams will compete in the competition from the 2022 edition, which will have 10 teams and 74 matches where each side will play seven home and seven away games.
The league had approved a proposal in December to add two franchises to the world’s richest Twenty20 competition, which has an estimated brand value of $6.8 billion.
ESPNcricinfo reported that 22 companies had purchased the tender document but only nine were at the bidding process that took place behind closed doors in Dubai earlier in the day.
