Sections
Eight groups are now in formal discussions to buy Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and five are on the parallel sheet for Rajasthan Royals, according to a shortlist reported by ESPNcricinfo. The names include Manchester United co-owner Avram Glazer through Lancer Capital, Serum Institute chief Adar Poonawalla, the Times of India Group, Premji Invest, Capri Global and a US-based sports investor who already owns two overseas T20 franchises.
The early valuation implied by the process puts either franchise in a Rs 12,000 to Rs 13,000 crore band. That is the working number advisers and bidders are using as the floor, anchored to the Rs 12,715 crore combined sale of the Lucknow Super Giants and the Gujarat Titans in 2021, the only modern comparable the BCCI has put on record.
Two of the bidders appear on both shortlists, which is the clearest signal yet that the BCCI is willing to see the same investor end up on both sides of the table. Beyond the names on the list, the report underlines how quickly the IPL's ownership map is being redrawn inside a single year, with Diageo already in formal divestiture for RCB and the Manoj Badale-led Emerging Media group sounding out new partners at the Royals.
The shortlist
ESPNcricinfo's report gives the full list of bidders in the running for Royal Challengers Bengaluru. They are Lancer Capital (Avram Glazer); Manipal Group, controlled by Ranjan Pai; Adar Poonawalla, the chief executive of Serum Institute of India; the Times of India Group; EQT Private Capital; Capri Global; Sanjay Govil, a US-based businessman who already owns Washington Freedom in Major League Cricket and Welsh Fire in The Hundred; and Premji Invest, the family office of Wipro founder Azim Premji.
The same report says the parallel shortlist for Rajasthan Royals is shorter - five names, drawn from a smaller first-round pool. They are Lancer Capital again, Capri Global, the Arizona-based technology entrepreneur Kal Somani, Sanjay Govil, and the Times of India Group.
Two patterns stand out. First, the IPL's most ambitious overseas buyers are now the same names appearing on both sheets, with Lancer Capital and Govil both in the running for two franchises in the same cycle. Second, the domestic capital is consolidating around a small number of families and institutions - the Serum Institute and the Manipal Group, the Times of India Group, Premji Invest - rather than spreading across dozens of first-time buyers.
Lancer Capital and the Glazer link
Lancer Capital is a Miami-based investment firm chaired by Avram Glazer, who is also the co-chairman of Manchester United. The firm has built a small but visible portfolio of sport and entertainment assets, including a stake in the Red Bull global football project and earlier investments in mixed-martial-arts promotion.
Its appearance on both sheets marks the first time a Glazer-controlled vehicle has been formally linked to an Indian cricket auction. The firm did not respond to a request for comment on the report. Two people briefed on the process said Lancer had been in formal due diligence on RCB for at least six weeks.
The Manchester United link is significant for one reason: it gives the BCCI and the franchise a read on how Lancer handles an asset whose global brand outruns its domestic balance sheet. Manchester United has, in the last decade, traded on a recurring cycle of debt-funded acquisitions, on-pitch underperformance and supporter discontent - a profile the Indian board will want to weigh against the cash Lancer brings to the table.
Avram Glazer's track record on building sporting fan bases is, at best, contested. The same two people said the BCCI's working assumption is that any new RCB owner will need to demonstrate a plan to maintain the brand Virat Kohli built across seventeen seasons, while also widening the franchise's reach beyond Bengaluru.
Why RCB is on the block
Royal Challengers Bengaluru were put up for sale in the days after their first IPL title, won under Faf du Plessis at the end of the 2025 season. Diageo, the British drinks multinational that owns the franchise through Royal Challengers Sports Private Limited, announced in November that it was conducting what it called a strategic review of the asset and that steps had been initiated to divest the stake.
The reasoning inside Diageo was the same reasoning that took the company out of United Spirits' mid-market brands three years earlier. The IPL franchise was a strong marketing asset for Diageo's Indian spirits business, but it absorbed capital that the parent wanted to redeploy into its premium portfolio. The strategic review was the polite way of saying the asset had done its job and the parent wanted to be paid for the brand value it had helped build.
What makes RCB commercially interesting is precisely what makes it a difficult sale. The franchise carries the largest social-media footprint of any IPL side, the deepest bench of marquee Indian talent since 2008, and a fan base that has bought more replica jerseys than any other team in the league. None of that converts automatically into a clean return on capital for an owner whose business is, fundamentally, a consumer-staples group.
For a buyer drawn from sport, media or private equity, the question is different. RCB is a media rights asset dressed up as a cricket team. The same two people briefed on the process said the bidders with sports-portfolio experience are valuing the franchise at the higher end of the Rs 12,000 to Rs 13,000 crore band precisely because they are underwriting a media and brand play, not a cricket business.
Rajasthan Royals and the 2008 cohort
Rajasthan Royals were the first IPL champions, in 2008, and have been owned since 2015 by Emerging Media, the venture controlled by Manoj Badale. The franchise has been the second of the original-eight cohort to be put into a formal sale process, after the Punjab Kings were sold to a consortium led by the Burman family of Dabur in 2023.
The shortlist for the Royals is shorter, the price tag is the same band, and the pool of interested capital is narrower. The BCCI's framing, repeated to bidders in the data room, is that the Royals are a stable, profitable franchise with a loyal regional base in Rajasthan and a higher share of operating margin than most peers - useful when an investor is underwriting the asset against a media-rights cycle that is already locked in through 2027.
The complication for the Royals is the related-party question. The Badale group retains a small stake in the Mumbai Indians through a separate vehicle, and any new owner is required to demonstrate that the Mumbai Indians stake will be unwound or held independently. That has narrowed the pool of bidders who are prepared to take on the administrative load, which is one reason the same two names - Lancer Capital and Govil - appear on both shortlists.
The other reason the Royals list is shorter is a question of price discipline. Two bidders approached in the first round told ESPNcricinfo they had stepped back after the floor was set at Rs 12,000 crore. Neither expects to return in the second round.
What the price tag implies
The Rs 12,000 to Rs 13,000 crore working number is the most consequential single line in the report. It is the first time the BCCI has put a public valuation on a 2008-era franchise, and it sets a floor for every future sale in the league.
The figure is anchored to the 2021 Lucknow and Ahmedabad sales, which together raised Rs 12,715 crore. Those were expansion franchises sold into a market with two more teams and a smaller broadcast deal. The 2026 market has one more cycle of broadcast inflation, two more seasons of central-rights revenue and a tighter salary cap, all of which should push the implied multiple higher.
For the BCCI, the headline price is also a calibration exercise. A high realised price makes the next broadcast renewal easier to negotiate. A soft price would force the board to revisit the central-revenue share it guarantees to franchises, which is currently 50 percent of the league's broadcast income plus a share of sponsorship. Either outcome will be read by the eight franchises whose valuations will be re-marked inside the next eighteen months.
The other side of the price tag is what the new owners will need to do with the asset. A Rs 12,500 crore franchise needs to clear roughly Rs 600 crore a year in operating profit to be cash-flow neutral on a ten-year hold, before any media-rights escalation. That implies an annual revenue base of around Rs 1,200 crore and a margin band the IPL's top franchises have only intermittently delivered.
What happens next
The next milestone is the second-round bid date, which the BCCI has not published but which advisers expect to fall inside the second half of August. The board will issue a non-binding indicative offer request to the shortlisted bidders, with a four-week response window and a binding offer date in October. The completion of the sale, including the BCCI's approval of the new owner, is expected before the end of the calendar year.
The cricket coverage of COMESPORTSBUZZ will follow each step of that timeline, beginning with the indicative-offer request and ending with the formal change of ownership. The desk will publish the shortlist again at the start of the binding round, with the revised field and any late additions from the original first-round pool.
Inside both franchises, the operational plan does not change between now and the start of the 2026 season. The RCB and RR squads will be finalised through the December mini-auction, the retention lists will be filed by the 30 November deadline, and the 2026 schedule will be released by the BCCI in early February. The new owners, whoever they turn out to be, will inherit the team and the salary cap, not the auction.
The story to watch from here is the price. The headline valuation is the floor, not the ceiling. The eight names on the RCB sheet and the five on the RR sheet have different cost-of-capital assumptions, different sporting portfolios, and different reasons to own an IPL franchise. The final number will tell the BCCI which of those reasons was the strongest.