Future Group, owned by Kishore Bayani and owners of famous retail stores- Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar, has pulled out of IPL’s central sponsorship pool, owing to it undergoing restructuring phase.
The Future group is being taken over by Reliance after suffering losses due to the prevailing hostile economic climate in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Yes, Future Group has pulled out of IPL central sponsorship and that’s the reason their logo has been removed from the IPL website. At this point of time, I won’t like to elaborate on the development,” a BCCI veteran confirmed the development to PTI.
“Future Group has been in bad shape since the start of Covid-19. It was bound to happen that they wouldn’t have been able to spend Rs 40 crore to be a part of BCCI’s central sponsorship pool. Hence, the pull-out is not a surprise,” the source said.
“Right now, the Future Group is going through a restructuring phase and there are talks with multi-national conglomerates about its potential takeover in the next few weeks. So sponsoring sporting events at the moment wasn’t a top priority for Future Group,” he added.
It is also learnt that the edu-tech company Unacademy is in line to become one of the official sponsors along with the credit card payment app Cred. As of now, the IPL website shows only four sponsors. They are Dream11 as title sponsors along with Tata Motors (Altroz), PayTM, and Ceat tyres.
The BCCI normally shares half of its central sponsorship kitty with the franchises.
“We know it’s not an ideal situation but you can’t blame BCCI for this. There is a financial crisis. If franchises have earned and made gains during good times, they understand and stand by BCCI during troubled times,” a senior official of a franchise said.
(PTI inputs)
