Reports: Adani Group to buy team in UAE T20 League after unsuccessful bidding for a new team in IPL 2022

The Adani Group was one of the business houses to have unsuccessfully bid for buying a team in IPL 2022 back in October last year. Despite bidding a staggering INR 5,100 crore each for acquiring both Ahmedabad and Lucknow franchises, the Gautam Adani-owned group could not make the final cut. However, it has now been reported that Asia’s richest man has decided to invest in a foreign franchise team. The report further states that all team owners of that foreign league are eminent personalities.

While the Adani Group could not make a mark in the IPL, they would now be shifting their focus towards a franchise cricket league, the UAE T20 League which the Emirates Cricket Board (ECB) has been planning to launch for quite a while. The league was initially set to be launched in January-February this year but, the organisers had to put all the planning on hold indefinitely due to the third wave of COVID-19.

Negotiations between ECB and Adani group at an advanced stage

According to the reports in Cricbuzz, the negotiations between the ECB and the Adani Group are at an advanced stage, and the officials of the Gautam Adani-promoted venture have confirmed the agreement between both parties that is expected to be signed by next week. At the same time, it has also been reported that the league has signed a 10-year deal with ZEE Group as their official broadcaster for a sum of USD 120 million.

While the UAE T20 League is yet to officially get underway, the league already boasts of having some elite personalities as team owners. They include the likes of the CMD of Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) Mukesh Ambani, Bollywood megastar and the Kolkata Knight Riders co-owner, Shah Rukh Khan, Kiran Kumar Granthi of GMR, and the Glazer family that owns one of the oldest and the successful English Premier League clubs, Manchester United to name a few.