A couple of days back, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) officially suspended their partnership with Chinese mobile phone firm Vivo. The Chinese firm happened to be the title sponsor for the Indian Premier League (IPL). BCCI had signed a five-year contract in 2018 with Vivo of more than $330 million to sponsor the money-spinning cricket league.
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The decision to suspend the partnership was taken pertaining to the deadly India-China border clash in June 2020. Since the border clash, there has been an outrage in the nation to ban any Chinese products. Speaking of the same, the BCCI President Sourav Ganguly said that the decision to suspend a profitable contract with its main sponsor should be considered as ‘just a blip’.
Ganguly said, “I wouldn’t call it a financial crisis. It is just a little bit of a blip.” He further added the cricket governing body in India is a very strong foundation. The players, administrators, and everyone in the past has made this game so strong that BCCI can easily sustain all these blips.
The former India skipper also added that now they have their options open- Plan A and Plan B. The 13th season of the IPL is all set to begin in the UAE. The decision to stage the IPL in the UAE was taken on account of the rising COVID-19 cases in India.
Each of the eight IPL franchises stands to lose nearly $4 million from the lost sponsorship. The BCCI was in talks with Indian companies over title sponsorship but was expected to make less than $60 million it would have received from the Chinese firm Vivo.