Lalit Modi, every mention

Indian Premier League Cricket (Audio) · Acquired Mar 24, 2025 · 56 mentions

• ▶ 1:37:01 David Rosenthal So when IMG and Lalit go out to bring the bidding to the TV networks for this,
• ▶ 1:40:08 David Rosenthal Lalit and IMG are ready to take it out to the markets for bidding.
• ▶ 1:40:41 David Rosenthal Uh, and of course, you know, what do you think Lala says?
• ▶ 1:40:53 Ben Gilbert It wasn't specifically called out by either party, and so, therefore, Lollett gets to say, this is something different.
• ▶ 1:41:16 David Rosenthal Which, this is always Lollett's argument of, I make money for everybody.
• ▶ 1:42:14 David Rosenthal Lalit quote.
• ▶ 1:43:01 David Rosenthal And obviously that's not what Lala wants, because he needs the cash to have the central sponsorship guarantees, central media guarantees out to the franchises.
• ▶ 1:44:20 David Rosenthal Yes, this is a very compelling business plan, Lalit and IMG, but no domestic cricket league has ever proven valuable anywhere in the world.
• ▶ 1:45:00 David Rosenthal So, you know, it's something, it's money on the table, but it's not really gonna send the signal of strength to franchise bidders that Lollit wants for the auction coming up.
• ▶ 1:48:45 David Rosenthal And what Lalit is architecting here is not just saying transactions.
• ▶ 1:49:36 David Rosenthal Well, you could argue if you're WSG whether you should have or should not have valued Lawlet's trustworthiness, because what he offers does end up coming to pass, just not in the spirit in which he offered it.
• ▶ 1:51:04 David Rosenthal But, here's the kicker, Lalit is the master of manipulating time in his deals.
• ▶ 1:51:46 David Rosenthal And then there's upside from sponsorships that Lollett might go sell, but he needed to get the franchises in place before he sells the sponsorships.
• ▶ 2:02:43 David Rosenthal Okay, so Lala comes up with this incredibly brilliant idea and says, you know what, instead of having a salary cap, I've got something that I think might work even better.
• ▶ 2:03:10 Ben Gilbert And Lalit, this man is so good at using the business laws of physics out there in the world to figure out what things are actually worth.
• ▶ 2:03:42 David Rosenthal Lalit Modi is a value maximization pioneer.
• ▶ 2:03:50 David Rosenthal So here's Lalit's quote on how the auction comes about.
• ▶ 2:08:38 David Rosenthal So the great beauty of the auction that Lalit sets up is that he sets both a maximum spend, a purse for every team coming into the auction, and a minimum spend.
• ▶ 2:11:00 David Rosenthal So the maximum salary that he sets for year one is five million dollars or maximum purse for the auction.
• ▶ 2:12:21 David Rosenthal And then the other important impact that I think you were saying there, Ben, is because all of this collapses to a single point in time, it means the IPL and Lalit can say all player contracts are standard contracts.
• ▶ 2:14:07 Ben Gilbert This is constantly Lalit's argument.
• ▶ 2:21:32 David Rosenthal Lalit and the BCCI would say, oh, no, no, no, of course it was open and transparent.
• ▶ 2:24:28 David Rosenthal So anyway, all this, just like Lalit prophesized, huge headlines, just adds to the media buzz.
• ▶ 2:25:47 David Rosenthal As you might expect, given the incredible architecture of it, and Lolit's force of will personality,
• ▶ 2:26:30 David Rosenthal Lalit was running such a high wire act with all of these year one deals, like, hey, I promise you this is gonna work like we all think in year one, and if it doesn't, I'll shut it all down.
• ▶ 2:36:59 David Rosenthal Well, before it all almost falls apart in year two, in the off-season after year one, Lollit, the BCCI, all the teams, all the owners, they're all riding high.
• ▶ 2:37:18 David Rosenthal So, I foreshadowed a little bit ago in the TV rights deal with World Sports Group and Sony that Lalit had given him his word as a gentleman that if this whole thing doesn't work, I'll rip up the deal and I'll, won't carry IPL forward.
• ▶ 2:37:51 David Rosenthal Lalit rips up the deal.
• ▶ 2:38:40 David Rosenthal I suspect that had the IPL not been such a huge success, and Lalit were not looking to tear up the contract, he would not have caught these discrepancies, shall we say.
• ▶ 2:40:04 David Rosenthal As Lalit would point out, I made a lot of money for everyone.
• ▶ 2:44:08 David Rosenthal And this is the first time, really, where the music stops playing for Lalit.
• ▶ 2:44:38 David Rosenthal And this is when the knives come out for Modi.
• ▶ 2:44:41 Ben Gilbert And so he's got all these enemies that were sort of dispersed
• ▶ 2:44:44 Ben Gilbert But never had any sort of real ability to come after him.
• ▶ 2:44:50 David Rosenthal So, after the twenty-ten season, the BCCI suspends Modi from the BCCI board on 22 charges, including bypassing the governing council when making decisions, not following proper processes,
• ▶ 2:45:37 David Rosenthal Another BCCI board member, N Srinivasan, who I think by this time had become the chair of the board and was Lalit's sort of main nemesis on the BCCI board, he directly owned the Chennai Super Kings through Indian cements.
• ▶ 2:47:05 David Rosenthal So, the accusations are that Modi is participating in this and actively betting on games.
• ▶ 2:47:17 David Rosenthal 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.
• ▶ 2:47:32 Ben Gilbert And in 2013, the BCCI bars him from India cricket for life.
• ▶ 2:47:45 David Rosenthal Modi, of course, denies all of this, and defends himself vehemently to this day.
• ▶ 2:48:34 David Rosenthal Hey, everything was working great as long as the music was playing, and Lalit never lost money for any of his partners, and then that happened, and then the knives came out.
• ▶ 2:48:44 David Rosenthal And it's interesting, quite interesting, all these very serious allegations that get brought up against Modi, and then he ultimately, the BCCI, decides that he did do them and bans them for life in 2013.
• ▶ 2:48:57 David Rosenthal Because the chairperson of the BCCI at this point in time, and Lalit's great rival, who's one of the forces behind ousting him,
• ▶ 2:49:43 David Rosenthal Lollick kicking out the founder, the driving force behind all of it.
• ▶ 2:50:48 David Rosenthal I think if this hadn't happened, and there'd just been the forcing out of Modi, things might really have gone sideways here.
• ▶ 2:55:06 David Rosenthal For Modi, for Srinivasan, but frankly kind of necessary to clean this all up and make it ironclad enough that global private equity firms and global media companies in the ensuing years continue to come in and invest in this league.
• ▶ 2:55:41 David Rosenthal It's finally up, and Modi's no longer in the driver's seat here.
• ▶ 3:01:01 David Rosenthal Remember, the broadcasters before this, for all of Lalit's entrepreneurial success and talent, he was getting
• ▶ 3:25:43 David Rosenthal Lolit math.
• ▶ 3:42:55 David Rosenthal It may end up being that actually Lalit's sort of grand plan of being asset-light, debt-free, no stadiums in the beginning, in the long run, was actually just a temporary thing.
• ▶ 3:44:41 David Rosenthal Lalit was a genius at finding and engineering the creation of alternative bidders.
• ▶ 4:14:57 Ben Gilbert You couldn't have the IPL without Lalit Modi, period.
• ▶ 4:15:06 Ben Gilbert Could you have something of this scale and success without taking the good with the bad of everything Lalit accomplished?
• ▶ 4:15:17 David Rosenthal You needed Lalit Mounti.
• ▶ 4:16:33 David Rosenthal So it's like you almost needed a lolit to come along and be like, do this on behalf of the BCCI while wetting my beak, so to speak, on the side, too.
• ▶ 4:18:13 David Rosenthal My quintessence for the IPL is that they, and by they I mean specifically Lalit Modi and IMG, designed the thus far most perfect sports entertainment product that mankind has ever known.