Cricket was the missing piece in our bid to build a strong sports business: JSW Sports CEO

Recently, GMR group announced that it has entered into an agreement with JSW Sports for a 50:50 partnership in GMR Group’s cricket franchise Delhi Daredevils. With this, the JSW Sports group has successfully ventured into cricket, something that was missing in their checklist earlier. The CEO of JSW Sports Private Limited, Mustafa Ghouse opined that cricket was the missing piece in their bid to build a strong sports business.

“This was an opportunity that Parth (Jindal, director of the sports vertical) and others were working on for a while. Yes, there were conversations with a couple of other teams but over the past few months it was only DD,” said Ghouse in an interview at Bengaluru FC’s office at Bangalore Football Stadium.

Helping Olympic disciplines will continue to be a key area says JSW Sports CEO

Despite entering into this partnership, JSW CEO cleared the air by making his future plans clear. He said that helping Olympic disciplines will be a key area for the company.

“The initial intent was to look at helping Olympic disciplines and that continues to be a key area. But from there we got into football, then Kabaddi. The Olympic programme gave us some success and then with football, we have continued to raise the bar. We did well, making it to the playoffs in our first season at kabaddi. All this gave us the confidence internally to take on bigger challenges,” said Ghouse.

However, the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) hasn’t given its green signal to the deal as yet. “We had a pretty positive meeting with them (the IPL Governing Council) yesterday (Friday) and are waiting to hear from them,” said Ghouse talking about the recent developments.

Ghouse also said that they’ll first understand the system. Only then, they will look to formulate the plans for the franchise according to him. “Delhi Daredevils are an established team. We will be looking to learn from them and not disrupt anything this close to the competition. Let us first understand the system. Then, we will collectively formulate plans,” said Ghouse.

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