LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has invited interested bidders for the sale of the sixth team of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) to replace the defaulting franchise Multan Sultans whose contract was terminated by the Board due to their inability to meet the financial obligations under the PSL agreement.

The interested bidders are asked to collect the bidding documents from the PCB offices by Dec 14 and the financial proposal of the technically qualified bidders will be opened on Dec 18 at 4pm.

It may be mentioned here that the Multan Sultans was the most expensive team of the PSL to date which was sold out for USD5.2 million per year for the next eight editions in 2017. But after playing just one edition in 2018, Multan Sultans were removed after being officially declared by the PCB as defaulters.

It is no secret that the PSL has become the most successful T20 leagues around the world after the Indian Premeier League (IPL). When Multan Sultan was inducted at a bumper price, the other five franchises had also got very excited about the substantial increase in the marketing price of their respective teams - to approximately five times of the original price. However, Multan’s sudden ouster has left them quite shocked and disappointed.

It may also be mentioned that the franchises have been constantly complaining that they are suffering huge losses and further claim that all the profits from PSL are, in fact, being reaped by the PCB.

On the other hand, the PCB claims that the losses incurred by the franchises are mainly due to their own policies of making huge expenses and indulging in unnecessary activities throughout the year to gain popularity.

“The PCB is offering a good share to the franchises from title sponsorship and media rights which is in billions per PSL edition,” a PCB spokesman said when asked about the disgruntled franchises over the profit issue.

“The PCB is giving 80 per cent share from the income of media rights to the franchises and a 50-50 ratio from the income of title sponsorship,” the spokesman added.

It may be mentioned here that the PCB has resold PSL’s title sponsorship for a whopping sum of USD1.4 billion for the next three years a few months ago.

Published in Dawn, December 1st, 2018