Chennai: BCCI president and former India cricket captain Sourav Ganguly has described the suspension of the IPL title sponsorship deal with Chinese mobile phone company Vivo as just a ‘blip’. He also dismissed talk that it might lead to a “financial crisis”.
The BCCI and Vivo on Thursday decided to suspend their partnership for the 2020 IPL beginning on September 19 in the UAE amid the clamour to boycott Chinese products in the wake of the Sino-India border stand-off.
The title sponsorship is a significant part of the IPL’s commercial revenue, half of which is shared equally by the eight franchises. Vivo won the IPL title sponsorship rights for five years from 2018 to 2022 for a reported sum of Rs 2,190 crore, approximately Rs 440 crore per annum.
Speaking at a webinar, Ganguly said, “’I wouldn’t call it as a financial crisis. It’s just a little bit of a blip.”
“BCCI, it’s a very a strong foundation – the game, the players, the administrators in the past have made this game so strong that BCCI is able to handle all these blips,” he said.
Ganguly said the BCCI always has a ‘Plan B’ for these kind of situations.”You keep your other options open. It is like Plan A and Plan B. Sensible people do it. Sensible brands do it. Sensible corporates do it,” he added.