Transfer of Team India sponsorship raises transparency questions

The Indian cricket team is set to don the logo of a new sponsor from September replacing Chinese firm Oppo. Byju’s, a Bengaluru-based educational technology and the online tutorial firm has taken over as the Men in Blue’s new sponsor. However, the transition has not convinced all who believe that fresh bidding should have been done.

Officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) are of the opinion that a fresh bidding process should have have been followed if Oppo isn’t keen to continue as the sponsor. According to them, it would not only have made things transparent but also allowed the board to bag a better deal.

Zee News cited reports as quoting a senior BCCI official who said that rather than the mere transfer of ownership, a fresh bidding process would have sent a signal of transparency. “Transparency is a bigger issue now than before. The question that is really playing on the mind is that what if a better value could have been obtained at this stage. Essentially the rights would have been assigned to another company without a process that is transparent,” the official was quoted as saying.

CEO appeared to be clueless, says official

Another board official seconded the thought and even pointed out that CEO Rahul Johri should have spoken to the board officials about the whole discussion that took place over the transfer of sponsorship. He even alleged that the CEO appeared to be clueless and questioned why such important decisions are not communicated to the BCCI.

“Is someone under the misconception that he owns the BCCI instead of being employed by it? These are not day-to-day affairs for sure,” he said. The Committee of Administrators (CoA) that runs the BCCI had a talk on this matter in their meeting that took place on June 7 and wanted the legal team to have a look into the matter.

Oppo, who took over in early 2017, was paying the BCCI a whopping amount of Rs 4.61 crore per bilateral match and Rs 1.56 crore for a match hosted by the ICC. Earlier, Star India paid Rs 1.92 crore per bilateral game and Rs 61 lakh for an ICC game.

Another official said the turn of events regarding the sponsors in the last few seasons showed possibilities of two conclusions and neither of them was a positive one. He said either Oppo found it not viable to continue or it was possibly making more from the deal which meant that true value had not been achieved in the first case.