Lalit Modi

“You couldn't have the IPL without Lalit Modi, period.”

“No debt. No team is allowed to have debt and de facto, no team will own their stadiums.”

“Of the central media rights revenue, the broadcast deals like they've just done with WSG and Sony, and also the central sponsorship deals, 50%, one half of that, will get distributed out to the collective eight franchises to be distributed equally. But, here's…”

“So Nike comes in and wins at fifty-two million Dollars a year.”

“And thus begins a 10 to 15 year journey that is not just the ultimate revenge play by Lalit on Rupert, but accidentally along the way starts the biggest sports entrepreneurial story phenomenon that has ever existed.”

“As this is all going down, Modi ends up leaving India and relocating to London, where he still lives to this day, and he has not set foot back in India since 2010 when this all goes down.”

“And in 2013, the BCCI bars him from India cricket for life. I mean, this thing that he, like, willed into existence, that he created billions of dollars of value for all these other people, he has been barred from.”

“There's a big lawsuit about it, goes on for a couple of years, and at the end of it, Lalit gets booted out of the business, and despite his family's 50% ownership in that original ESPN Disney joint venture, he gets nothing.”

“Sony is now going to directly do a ten-year deal with the IPL for 2.4 billion dollars. So two hundred and forty million dollars a year. Quite a bit more than the sixty million dollars that they had paid for year one.”

“So thus sparks, unquestionably, truly unquestionably, this is in zero way a controversial statement, the most brilliant, most successful sports entrepreneurial business plan Of all time. The Indian Premier League, a domestic, city-based cricket league in India…”

“While it uses the sales force that the Modi company has for their tobacco products, they have 80,000, a 100,000 sales reps that are going to convenience stores, corner stores, you know, in every part of the country in India, this vast, vast country where the m…”

“So in the first year of the league, The Rajasthan Royals who have the lowest salary, they actually don't hit the minimum salary and they get fined by Lalit. So the maximum salary that he sets for year one is five million dollars or maximum purse for the auctio…”

“He's created the single biggest pool of money anywhere around the globe in cricket as a sport. I mean, this is Way more money that we're talking about here than England or Australia or the West Indies or Sri Lanka, New Zealand, you know, the other cricket play…”

“So, when this massive escalation happens in 2005, I believe this is correct, overnight, this becomes the highest paid jersey logo deal of any sport on the entire planet.”