There's no stopping sponsors of India's cricket team

Dubai: The ongoing global recession is unlikely to give the Indian cricket team any blues.

The Men in Blue are set to gain at least 40 per cent in terms of their official sponsorship when the new sponsors are announced with much fanfare on November 25.

Tuesday is the last date for submission of tenders, with the highest bidder winning pride of place on the shirts of Indian players the day after at the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) headquarters.

While Sahara India's current four-year contract, signed in 2005, was worth approximately $70 million (Dh257 million), informed sources in the BCCI were hoping that it would touch the $100 million mark this time.

A first of sorts

In what would be a ‘first,' the BCCI has invited bids for individual sponsorships of the four teams, namely, the senior and junior teams, the India A squad and the women's team as well as the usual overall sponsorship offer.

There is intense speculation if the Sahara Group's sway over the logos of the Indian cricket teams will be coming to an end, something which had been under their control since 2001.

The company headquartered in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, had forked out a whopping $52 million in 2001 to become the title sponsors for the first time, a figure which they bettered by about 30 per cent to $70 million four years back.

"There is no point in denying the economic downturn, but that has not deterred the corporate houses from coming to us. We have hiked the rates of sponsorship per one-dayer by 50 per cent, and look to maximise the revenue from the 110 ODIs that is supposed to come under the next four-year cycle," Niranjan Shah, former BCCI secretary and a member of the marketing committee, told Gulf News over the phone.

Last time around, the Sahara Group had fought off bids from Idea Cellular, Reliance Mobile and Indian Oil — with Hero Honda pulling out of the race at the last minute — but the competition is only likely to get intense this time.

The last four years have seen India emerge as a bigger playground for several more global players and the names of a host of telecom, automobile and consumer durable brands are being floated around with Air Sahara as potential bidders.

Riders

While the race to sign up the Indian cricket team — the biggest brand in the country — is understandable there is often a slip between the cup and the lip.

The biggest rider that the board places is that it reserves the right to cancel or amend the entire bidding process at any stage or to reject any and all bids without assigning any reason — a clause that has irked some of the biggest corporate giants in India in the past.

Let's see who has the last laugh this time!