The Greed of Lust

The topic of this post is a parody on a similar sounding title of my favourite book The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything.

With great power comes great responsibility,” said Spiderman. The BCCI and Mr Lalit Modi, spin doctors to the Indian Premier League empire, had probably not watched enough Spiderman movies to take home the message. The bidders for the franchisees, including the behind-the-scene players, were also equal partners in their lust for power in a domain that could provide instant celebrity status.


The biggest thing wrong with the IPL, they say, is that it promotes greed; it’s cricket selling out. It’s made the gentleman’s game a pimp’s paradise. It is this collective greed born out of lust for power that is driving the IPL brand to such dizzy heights, which is estimated today at a whopping $4.13 billion in less than three years. The mind boggling $333.33 million bid for the Kochi IPL team is further evidence.



Set Max set a deal of $1842 million with the IPL last year. The first three years, BCCI gets 20%, franchisees get 80%. Years 4 and 5, BCCI gets 30%, franchisees 70%. Years 6 to 10, BCCI gets 40%, franchisees 60%. As per an IIFL research report, the franchisees rake in the revenue with 1) sponsors (around $4.5 million); 2) gate receipts (80% of seats in the stadium are available to franchise for sale. The seven matches played on the home ground are the franchisee’s pocket money and it’s around Rs 15 crore); 3) in-stadia advertising (boundary advertising boards available to the franchise, around $1.1 million); 4) merchandise sales $1 million; 5) media tie-ups.

They spend the following: player salaries ($6.75 million), travel and stay (Rs 4 crore), stadium fees ($0.79 million), team promotions (media promotions for visibility, $2.7 million), other costs (staff, admin etc, $1.1 million).

Now, that’s the lifetime earning of the entire Indian Middle Class put together, with the provident fund thrown in. Not an inch has been spared to generate revenue. The jerseys look like graffitis of greed; the trousers with a logo on each leg are no different. Helmets, caps, grounds, sightscreens, stumps, umpires, boundary ropes, dugouts, and the giant screen, there are logos everywhere. The ads are played not just between overs, but between deliveries.

Mr Lalit Modi is facing charges of nepotism and ‘fixing’, if not interfering with, the bidding process. There appears to be some in-law or the other of Modi holding a sizeable stake in every other IPL team, from Rajasthan Royals (33.33 per cent held by husband of his sister-in-law), to Kings XI Punjab (25 per cent held by husband of his stepdaughter), to Kolkata Knight Riders, while Global Cricket Ventures, which has bagged the digital and mobile rights for the IPL, is partly owned by his step son-in-law.

Ms Sunanda Pushkar, a Canadian citizen normally resident in Dubai, was an entirely unknown “marketing wizard” from Dubai till she chanced to come across Mr Tharoor while he was involved with a Dubai-based company during the interregnum between his UN stint and present avatar as Congress MP and Minister. But when she lands a lucrative deal with the Kochi consortium, getting sweat equity way above the permissible limit (whose value could rise astronomically in the stock market in a few years), eyebrows are bound to rise.It is Ms Sunanda Pushkar’s self-admitted dalliance with the Union Minister who in turn has publicly claimed that he facilitated the Kochi franchise, which is the biggest cause for concern and has exposed the rot in the entire system of IPL financing.

It has been alleged that the Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor has an indirect stake in the new Kochi IPL franchise, which represents his home state of Kerala. The IPL chairman Lalit Modi, revealed on his Twitter feed that Tharoor had advised the IPL management against disclosing the name of Dubai-based businessperson Sunanda Pushkar, as one of the co-owners of the team.

And then, of course, there are allegations of financial irregularities and money being routed into IPL and BCCI from tax havens abroad that are now being investigated. By directly promoting IPL business, BCCI has seriously compromised with its regulatory role, now even more diluted with some IPL franchisees also being on the BCCI management.

Where does this all take us as a nation which still has 25 per cent of its population below poverty line? Surely, the government could have devised a better, transparent mechanism to the otherwise brilliant concept to ensure revenue generation through taxes along with a pricing control mechanism.

To end this post, I would like to use an idea from a blog I read this week :

Short-sighted competition among power-hungry and greedy people show the absurdity of acting as if the wealth that they create will make them immortal— don't they realise that they are fighting only to secure a better place on the deck of the Titanic?

If only they use this opportunity to empower others with more 'rafts' and make everyones lives a shade better?