Sunday Guardian
If suspended IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi is keeping quiet,it is not without reason. Apparently when he came to Delhi to mount alegal challenge, he was told by city based senior counsels that it isbest at this juncture to prepare an adequate defence to the showcauseissued by the BCCI instead of going directly to court. In any caseformer president A C Muthiah's petition against N Srinivasan hasalready been admitted in the apex court. Moreover, it is Modi'sfriends and family enterprises which was a wide and varied networkwhere his tentacles were omnipresent. By slicing and dicing the rightspie, Modi made money hand over fist for the BCCI and doubled thecentral revenue pool for the franchisees, butbeneficiaries of his largesse were also his tightly knit circle offriends and family. Now when the BCCI wonders where the concludedcontracts are, some of these murky relationships are beinginvestigated. Sportzpower tried to track down some of these deals toexamine the extent of crony capitalism that Modi and Co indulged in.When Modi sold the theatrical rights of IPL to Entertainment andSports Direct (ESD) for Rs 330 crore for ten years, these samedistribution rights were transferred to Crown Infotainment and UFOMoviez. ESD is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dubai based investmentadvisory and private equity firm Dar Capital Group, headed by ArunRangachary.
Now guess who owned Crown Infotainment? Yes, Kunal Dasgupta, theformer CEO of MSM/Sony Entertainment Television. The technologypartner remained UFO Moviez and in another coincidence both UFO Moviezand Crown are owned in turn by Valuable Media. And who was the CEO ofUFO Moviez? Rendezvous investor Sanjay Gaikwad. This complicated webgets even more complex when it is discovered that ESD has another Modiloyalist - Chris McDonald as partner along with Dasgupta and one KapilAgarwal. Agarwal, Joint MD of UFO Moviez is reported to be related toModi from his mother's (Bina) side, but this remains unsubstantiated.
Chris McDonald incidentally was the CEO of Ten Sports. Ten Sports wasfirst brought into India by Lalit Modi owned Modi EntertainmentNetwork. McDonald now wears many hats, he also doubles up as the CEOof Red Partners. Which has an ominous linkage with the IPL. It wasnamed the one year on ground food concessionaire for the IPL thisyear. Red Partners was centrally responsible for the entire food andbeverage experience of IPL. On getting the contract earlier this yearMcDonald said, "We will work towards ensuring that IPL fans attendingthe 45 day cricketing carnival across India will now be privy to atruly world-class food and beverage experience akin to what sportingfans around the world have become accustomed to. Our standardizedmenus will cater to the unique fan base of each region enhancing theinstadia experience for IPL fans.”
Last year McDonald had stepped down as CEO of Taj TV's Ten Sports, acompany which he founded in late 2000. McDonald and Modi have knownone another for years. Modi's earlier venture Modi EntertainmentNetwork specialised in handholding foreign channels and broadcastersin their quest to grab a slice of the still closely controlled Indianmarket. Modi got Walt Disney, ESPN, Ten Sports and FTV in to Indiathis way. But most of these relationships soured very quickly, withsome ending up in arbitration proceedings. Pioneer Diagsys, anotherfirm floated by the same Kunal Dasgupta who architected the multipleyear multi million IPL broadcast deal with Lalit Modi, has the rightsto hawking the advertising in between the 20:20 matches. The mid over150 second advertising rights deal was sealed by Dasgupta and Modijust days before season 3 kicked off. It is believed that Pioneerwould have made Rs 54 crore from this deal itself. These 150 secondswere retained by Modi and IPL despite protests from Sony formonetising through this process at a subsequent date.
Similarly, another allegedly dubious and quickly concluded deal wasthe one with Yog Sports, a marketing and distribution company whichIPL and Modi tied up with for merchandising of IPL products for aperiod of 10 years. Yog's job was to set up IPL match stores atvarious IPL venues, malls, high street destinations, multiplexes,airports et al and a total of 200 stores across 12 cities. Theyappeared virtually out of the blue with one Saumitra Srivastava namedas director of the company.
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