Ambani brothers likely to compete for IPL Twenty20 title rights

Both Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Industries Limited and the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group are said to be eyeing the title sponsorship for the Indian Premier League Twenty20 tournament floated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, sources close to the development confirmed on Friday.

RIL, owned by elder brother Mukesh Ambani, had acquired the Mumbai team last month for $111.9 million (about Rs 448 crore) for 10 years. Anil Ambani chose to stay away from the bids for the eight teams last month.

Bidding for the title sponsorship is due February 13 and is expected to attract a base price of Rs 23.6 crore for one year.

The Ambani brothers, who split their father's petrochemicals-to-telecommunications empire on June 18, 2005, had agreed not to enter each other's areas of business.

The agreement, however, does not cover new business areas such as cricket sponsorship.

The brothers' companies are currently in dispute over the supply and pricing of natural gas to ADAG plants from the RIL-owned Krishna-Godavari basin.

Both RIL and ADAG spokesmen declined to comment.

The rights, which offer enormous branding potential, will be given for the first five seasons of IPL. The winner of the title rights holds the first right of refusal for the next five years (the 6th to 10th seasons).

Companies will have to submit a performance guarantee deposit of Rs 10 crore on Monday to participate in the bidding.

The title sponsor has the right to advertise in all IPL match scorecards and programmes and can advertise across a maximum of 12 boards in all 59 matches. It will also get the sponsorship of the Man of the Match award.

The title rights also include mileage on promotional material such as television graphics and on-field branding on the stumps, floodlight pylons, sightscreens, team dugouts and boundary ropes.

BCCI will also issue tickets to the title sponsor and permit branding and promotional activities on tickets.

IPL will begin in April and will host 59 matches that will be played between eight teams.

Apart from RIL's ownership of the Mumbai team, the other team owners are GMR (Delhi), a Shah Rukh Khan consortium (Kolkata), the Emerging Media consortium (Jaipur), Preity Zinta (Mohali), Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad), Vijay Mallya (Bangalore) and India Cement (Chennai).