RCB and RR sales: Everyone Is Talking To Everyone
Binding bids are due March 16. What serious bidders have found when they looked closely is considerably more complicated than either seller’s information memoranda suggested.
Latest
Google’s longest game
Google has spent fifteen years embedding itself into cricket's ecosystem: as a platform, a sponsor, a rights-market observer, and now a kingmaker. The sport's two biggest auctions arrive in 2027. The groundwork is already laid.
The Rajasthan Royals sale: Why sellers are watching RCB closely
The RCB and RR sales are now entangled, with overlapping bidders, shifting timelines, and each side watching to see what price the other commands. Meanwhile, the shortlists narrow and complications mount.
The visibility dividend: How associate cricket rewrote the economics of the game
For decades, cricket's margins existed in silence. Then visibility became a commodity that could be manufactured, and everything changed.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru attracts $1.8 billion bid as nine parties compete
The State of Play can reveal the complete list of bidders for both franchises as RCB narrows the field and Rajasthan Royals moves towards binding bids
India-Pakistan: Cricket’s costliest fixture goes missing
Pakistan’s proposed forfeit undermines JioStar’s $900 million tournament and the ICC funding system that sustains the game. Cricket has monetised the rivalry for years. The ledger finally became too heavy.
Inside the process: how the race for RCB and Rajasthan Royals is unfolding
The race for the two IPL franchises is now down to a handful of serious bidders. Months of exploratory conversations have given way to firmer offers, as buyers begin to confront the numbers and the realities of ownership
Inside Unrack’s bet on building elite sports equipment in India
India’s elite athletes train with equipment that is meant to be replaced. A Bengaluru-based manufacturer is betting that coaches and not procurement will change that logic
Indian football’s impossible restart
How the ISL is attempting to rebuild in 39 days what took a decade to construct
Inside Ten x You: How Sachin Tendulkar is rethinking the cricket shoe
What happens when India’s greatest cricketer treats footwear as an engineering problem, not an endorsement
Inside cricket’s $3 billion workaround
The broadcaster finds itself trapped in a $3 billion contract it can’t afford and can’t exit. The workaround taking shape will determine whether Indian cricket’s decade of growth was sustainable or inflated.
Exclusive: Rajasthan Royals draw interest in early ownership talks
A deep-pocketed gaming giant seeks a minority stake while a diversified conglomerate eyes majority or full ownership
Exclusives
Inside Dream Sports’ post-RMG metamorphosis
India’s online real-money gaming ban vaporised Dream11’s profit engine. Next week, the company relaunches with a radically different design. The State of Play has exclusive details on what comes next.
Exclusives
Exclusive: Lucknow Super Giants close in on $200 million fund raise
UK-based investor group negotiating a minority stake in the IPL franchise in one of the league’s largest recent equity deals
Reportage
The race to own India’s premium endurance boom
Hyrox and Ironman have revealed a premium fitness consumer that always existed. The race now is to build the infrastructure before others move in.
Analysis
The business behind India’s Women’s World Cup win
India’s World Cup win was the result of years of incremental reform, steady investment, and a league that treated women’s cricket as a business worth building.
Analysis
Decoding the RCB sale hypothesis
As Diageo looks to cut costs and refocus its portfolio, the RCB valuation offers a glimpse of how global consumer giants are learning to treat sport as an asset class rather than a marketing indulgence.
Reportage
Coaching Beyond: Meet Indian cricket’s coaching whisperers
While Ravi Shastri, Bharat Arun, and R Sridhar were guiding India to famous wins, they were studying another problem: who coaches the coaches? Their answer is now reshaping how cricket is taught across the country.
Reportage
The calculus of sport: How BKT built a global brand off the beaten path
An Indian industrial brand has rewritten the rules of sports marketing, backing small-town leagues and rural audiences from Italy to Australia, turning proximity into strategy.
Editorial
The $40 billion reset
Capital is flowing, franchises are multiplying, and participation is surging. But India's sporting infrastructure is being constructed in real time — and the gap between commercial momentum and institutional readiness has never been wider.
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A weekly newsletter on the business of sport, written from India with a view of the world