Melbourne Knight Riders? How an Indian Premier League mogul would transform the Aussie summer of cricket

The Melbourne or Sydney Knight Riders are emblazoned in the purple and gold colours of the global Kolkata Knight Riders group.

They are based at the famous MCG or SCG, and play in an exclusive January window for the Big Bash League, clear of any international cricket, so Australia’s most bankable stars can play in the whole tournament. Pat Cummins is available to sign as captain.

These are the kinds of conditions under which one of India’s top franchise moguls believes he and other potential Indian investors in the BBL would be willing to splash top dollar to buy into Australia’s flagship T20 league.

Venky Mysore, the long term chief executive of Kolkata Knight Riders, is among the businesspeople being courted by Cricket Australia as it explores what it regards as a once-in-a-generation chance to future-proof Australian cricket through the partial sale of BBL clubs.

Privatisation in sport is not a new phenomenon. English Premier League clubs, basketball and baseball franchises, and Formula 1 teams have billionaire owners, and there has been a rush of private investment in cricket leagues elsewhere in the world, including England’s the Hundred. But it’s a critical moment for Australian cricket.

It’s 45 years since any part of the Australian game was privatised, when Kerry Packer’s PBL was handed marketing rights and a revenue-sharing arrangement as part of the World Series Cricket peace deal.

Private investment in the BBL has been debated for more than a decade, but Cricket Australia has made it clear it wants to act quickly to seek agreement from state associations to sell up to 49 per cent of teams, claiming the risks of not acting are great.

CA says it can control the price and therefore how much influence is handed to private investors, protecting precious assets such as the Melbourne and Sydney Tests.

However, KKR group boss Mysore explained in an exclusive interview with this masthead that he and other potential investors would want an exclusive window for all players to appear in the entire BBL tournament, plus the right to rename and rebrand teams to give them higher visibility in India.

He said any overlap between Test cricket and the T20 league would be a red line for many potential investors.

This would leave Cricket Australia with a huge challenge around how to structure the summer while preserving the things that matter to Australian cricket fans; the Boxing Day and New Year’s Tests.

Mysore said it was unlikely that Indian investors with IPL teams in their stables would be content to buy into the BBL as passive participants. They would want a say in the name and branding of the teams, player availability, match timeslots and calendar windows.

“Sustained interest in the league will depend on the availability of all local and foreign players,” Mysore said. “The two key components are a dedicated window, without any clashes with other leagues, and full availability of local players.”

However, there is a contrast between investors, like KKR group or Mumbai Indians group – owned by the multi-billionaire Ambani family – and so-called “tech titans” based in the United States.

A group of these tech moguls recently paid $300 million for a 49 per cent stake in the London Spirit franchise based at Lord’s. Some investors may be content simply to buy in because of the prestige.

But already, the Hundred has been criticised by new franchise owners because the ECB rested some Test players from the early rounds following their exhausting drawn Test series against India.

At the same time, franchises are in the process of being renamed.

BBL clubs, such as the Melbourne Stars and Sydney Sixers, have been described as “trophy assets” that investors will want to buy into simply to be associated with legendary venues, such as the MCG, SCG or Adelaide Oval.

But Mysore says investors expecting a return will be looking for ways to be actively involved.

That is certainly the case for KKR, who would want to have a team named Melbourne or Sydney Knight Riders, branded in the group’s purple and gold colours, and involving players like Sunil Narine, who already have year-round deals with KKR.

“Knight Riders were the first to conceive of and execute on a global brand strategy,” Mysore said. “It has become a genuine global brand that has also globalised our fan base.”

CA says the Big Bash League is in good health, though still down on its peak season in 2016, when more than 80,000 people turned up for a Stars-Renegades derby at the MCG.

In those days, the BBL was seen as the world’s second-best T20 league behind the IPL, but since then, the franchise market has exploded.

There are now major leagues in South Africa and the UAE competing for players at the same time as the BBL, in addition to those in India, the West Indies, England and the United States.

This growth has provided unprecedented opportunities for players to make millions, and demonstrated how much private capital is potentially available to cricket in Australia, should CA and the states finally decide to take the plunge.

CA says the windfall would help supercharge the Big Bash, including a handsome increase to the salary cap to keep the best players from absconding to other leagues, and flow through to the grassroots.

“My experience with privately owned teams is, if done right, it’s a really good thing for the sport,” said Australian Test captain Pat Cummins, who was purchased by Sunrisers Hyderabad at the 2024 IPL auction $3.7 million.

“You look at an IPL team that’s privately funded, and the amount they put into the team and programs, they do their own development camps and their own talent pathway and academies.

“Our IPL team we have a social media team of about 30 people who travel around, so there’s things that can get unlocked that make the experience better for fans. Then the big question is how do you use those funds to make sure that cricket’s in a really good spot and supporting community cricket as well as professional cricket.”

But these leagues are not without their problems. The SAT20 is the third attempt by Cricket South Africa to grow a healthy franchise competition, jointly owned by pay TV service Supersport and a conglomerate of Indian investors. South Africa’s wider economic struggles, particularly in terms of the value of the Rand, is costing millions for team owners each year.

Mysore was not shy in saying that there is something of a bubble about the growth of franchise leagues, up to and including the lofty sums paid for teams in the Hundred.

“The financial viability in the medium to long term is a very important component,” Mysore said. “In the event that leagues are not financially viable, the future of those leagues will be questioned.”

The BBL is an attractive proposition for investors, given its history of relative financial success and the fact it is underpinned by Cricket Australia’s place as one of the “big three” nations alongside India and England.

But much of the BBL’s strength has derived from taking a very different approach to the franchise model. The tournament co-exists with Test cricket, especially around Boxing Day and New Year, and does not rely on the presence of Cummins, Travis Head or Mitchell Starc playing its full duration.

In turn, that has allowed the Australian Test team to perform at a consistently high level with minimal disruption from the T20 circuit. It’s a dynamic that relies upon a shared sense of purpose between Cricket Australia and the states, who control the BBL teams.

CA’s chief executive Todd Greenberg and chair Mike Baird have met with their state association counterparts over the past two weeks in attempts to thrash out details of a potential sale, but are yet to reach consensus. The states hold 30-year licences to the clubs, with a 15-year review clause that comes into effect next year.

“That’s what we’re considering,” Baird told this masthead. “If you did consider private investment, what are the key criteria we would keep.

“To individual teams and owners and what they might want, any sort of criteria, that is for us to consider and set the criteria. If we want to make the decision to consider private investment, it would be done on our terms, and done collectively.

“The risks and challenges we’ve seen across the world. The beauty is we can take the best of that and put in the terms and conditions that are important to Australian cricket.”

Mysore has fond memories of watching Test matches in his hometown of Chennai every January, and respects the traditions of Boxing Day and New Year Tests in Australia.

But that respect will not stop Mysore and others from asking questions before they decide whether to buy a franchise.

In the UK, team owners have pushed for the separate sale of broadcast rights for the Hundred, away from international cricket, so that the value of the tournament is more clearly known.

While the big broadcast numbers attracted by the Boxing Day and New Year’s Tests are widely thought to aid the audiences for BBL games in the evenings, franchise owners will want to know which is helping which.

Baird has stressed that CA and the states must retain control of whatever privatisation model is ultimately agreed. A decision is expected before the end of the year.

“Certainly, we’d want to control the schedule,” Baird said. “So that Test cricket remains an essential part of the Australian summer.”

Cummins said other nations would love to have the commercially successful Test series seen here.

“It is a different model to a lot of other countries, but I think it’s a better model,” he said. “They wish they could have five Test matches sold out and everyone watched as well as the BBL.

“It’s great we’ve got two tournaments that can run concurrently and there’s a place for both of them.”

The global strategy becomes still more attractive if Indian players are available to play outside the IPL. So far, the BCCI has rebuffed inquiries by franchise owners about allowing more freedom of movement, but the recent decision of champion off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin to quit the IPL and go “global”, potentially to the BBL this summer, shows that the mood is gradually shifting.

Mysore declined to comment on whether Indian players would be more freely available to play in overseas leagues in the future, but Baird said this week he was in constant discussions about the matter with Indian authorities.

The BBL was effectively bankrolled in its first two years by CA’s slice of the cash from the short-lived T20 Champions League. But in 2013 CA signed a deal with Ten for the tournament for about $100 million over five years. That figure grew again as part of a $1.18 billion overall deal with Foxtel and Seven in 2018, before the current $1.5 billion agreement was signed in 2023.

Franchise owners will want a percentage of the broadcast rights value from any future deals. In the meantime, plenty have conveyed their interest to Cummins, over numerous seasons of the IPL.

“Three or four of the IPL owners have been like, ‘oh we’d love to get involved’,” Cummins said. “A lot of Indian fans, they’ve grown up watching Australian cricket teams, and they hold Australian cricket in such high regard that the BBL is, in their eyes, a really attractive league they want to be a part of, and they want to be linked to Australian cricket.”

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