Pepsi pays $12.5 mn to be official IPL drink

NEW DELHI, March 18: Pepsi will be the official beverage of the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL) for five years and the deal with the soft drink giant has been struck at $12.5 million. Well-placed sources in the IPL said only the eight franchise owners would benefit from the deal. Pepsi, which has a long association with Indian cricket, has been the main sponsor of India's domestic tournaments for several years and has also been associated with the International Cricket Council (ICC) as its global sponsor. A significant part of the deal is that the eight franchises - Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Mohali, Jaipur and Hyderabad - will be the direct beneficiaries of the money accruing from the sponsorship.
"Pepsi will pay $2.5 million each year and, importantly, the entire income from this deal will go to the eight franchise owners," according to the IPL sources who did not wish to be identified. In other words, each franchisee stands richer by $312,500 per year. The team owners benefiting from this deal are Mukesh Ambani's Reliance, which bought Mumbai team for $111.9 million, Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad, $107.01 million), Vijay Mallya's UB Group (Bangalore, $106 million), India Cements (Chennai, $91 million), GMR Holdings (Delhi, $84 million), a consortium led by Preity Zinta (Mohali, $76 million), Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies (Kolkata, $75.09 million) and Emerging Media (Jaipur, $67 million). The Twenty20 tournament, comprising 59 matches, will be played over 45 days starting April 18. Matches will be telecast live on SET Max, which along with World Sports Group paid $1.026 billion to get the television rights for 10 years.