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Sports

'Team India sponsorship transfer raises questions on transparency'

New Delhi, July 25 
Virat Kohli and boys are set
to sport a new logo on their jerseys from September as Oppo will be
replaced by Byju's -- the Bangalore-based educational technology and
online tutorial firm -- as the team sponsor. But the Board of Control
for Cricket in India (BCCI) officials believe that a fresh bidding
process if Oppo isn't keen to continue should have been the process as
that would not only make it a transparent route, but also give the board
an opportunity to get a better deal.

Speaking to the media, a senior
BCCI official said that rather than merely transferring ownership,
looking at a fresh bidding process could have helped and also that would
have been a transparent procedure.

"Transparency is a bigger
issue now than before. The question that is really playing on the mind
is that what if a better value could have been obtained at this stage.
Essentially the rights would have been assigned to another company
without a process that is transparent," the official pointed.

Echoing
the sentiments another official also pointed at how CEO Rahul Johri
should have informed the board officials about the whole discussion on
the transfer of sponsorship.

"The most troubling thing is that
the CEO appears to be clueless. Why are such important things not being
communicated to the BCCI? Is someone under the misconception that he
owns the BCCI instead of being employed by it? These are not day to day
affairs for sure," the official said.

The Committee of
Administrators (CoA) had a discussion on this in their meeting on June 7
and they wanted the legal team to look into the matter and get back to
them. There was no mention of bringing the office-bearers into the
picture.

Oppo was paying BCCI Rs 4.61 crore per bilateral match
and Rs1.56 crore for an ICC hosted match. Before that, STAR India used
to pay Rs 1.92 crore per bilateral match and Rs 61 lakh for an ICC
match. Star didn't want to bid after their term got over as they didn't
want to invest at a time when there was internal turmoil in the board.

Another
official pointed at the turn of events with regards to team sponsors in
the last few seasons and said: "There are only two alternate
conclusions that can be drawn from this development and none of them are
positive. One is that Oppo did not think continuing in that role was
viable and the other is that Oppo is possibly making more from deal in
which case it means that the true value had not been achieved in the
first case," the official rued.