Dream11 pips Byju’s & Unacademy to win IPL 2020 title sponsorship

Dream11 won the rights with its bid of Rs 222 crore, Brijesh Patel, chairman of the IPL Governing Council told ET. “Dream11 has won the bid. The other two bids were from Byju’s and Unacademy for Rs 201 crore and 171 crore, respectively. We did not receive any more bids,” Patel said. ET had earlier reported that edutech startups Unacademy and Byju’s as well as the Tata Group had expressed interest in the title sponsorship rights of IPL 2020. For Dream11, which was already paying Rs 40 crore per year to the Board of Control for Cricket in India as the official partner of the IPL, it is an additional pay out of Rs 182 crore for IPL 2020. Under the deal, Vivo had agreed to pay the board Rs 2,190 crore, or about Rs 440 crore per season. A day after it was decided that IPL 2020 will be played in the UAE on account of Covid-19, the BCCI was criticised for allowing a Chinese company to be the title sponsor of the league in the aftermath of the dispute between the two nations along the border. In its EoI document, the board stipulated that a bidder should have posted a minimum turnover of Rs 300 crore in the last financial year. While the BCCI was expecting at least Rs 200-220 crore, marketers believed that the fair value of rights could be in the range of Rs 150-170 crore.