From the archives (2008): How Lalit Modi became the lord of IPL

At about 8 p.m. on January 24, a few hours after the hectic bidding for the Indian Premier League (IPL) teams, Lalit Kumar Modi was heading for dinner at The Oberoi in Mumbai. Although the franchisees had bid over $730 million (Rs 2,920 crore), the IPL chairman was assailed by doubts. Lost in thought, he bumped into Reliance ADAG Chairman Anil Ambani, who had failed to bag a team. Ambani greeted him with a quintessentially blunt "Why only eight teams, why not nine? What will it take to make it happen?" Ambani's fixation made Modi realise he had cracked the "want factor". History was in the making, but it didn't quite sink in till the crowd roared as Kolkata Knight Rider Brendon McCullum hoisted a Zaheer Khan delivery for a six at Bangalore in the first match.

The Monday following the IPL final-watched by 24 million-viewers and channels discussed the 8 p.m. withdrawal symptoms. In just 44 days, Indian cricket and evenings have undergone enormous change. After 59 matches, 2,360 overs, 17,610 runs, 677 wickets, 1,702 boundaries and 622 sixers, there is little doubt that Modi's brainwave has created history. Ironically, when he first aired the IPL idea in January, it had few takers. But Modi lured broadcasters and corporates alike, bagging over $1.7 billion (Rs 6,800 crore) for BCCI. The sponsors rolled in as he baited them with a spot in the limelight and embedded advertising. DLF, for instance, got billing every time a six was hit. And it all paid off. Thanks to a record viewership of 99 million, Modi raked in a profit of Rs 350 crore for BCCI in the first year.

On the face of it, Modi—a Marwari born in Delhi in 1963 and based in Mumbai-is an unlikely candidate for turning cricket into a more spectacular entertainment package. His persona is more Woodstock than W.G. Grace. The scion of the Rs 8,000-crore K.K. Modi Group, with interests in tobacco, metals, healthcare, real estate and finance, he wasn't quite in the big league. After school, where he occasionally connected willow to leather, Modi left for Duke University in North Carolina for a degree in management, but had to depart in haste in the wake of charges of drug abuse. That was in the mid-1980s. By 1992, he was in business, though his track record never set Dalal Street on fire. What Modi's US stint did spark was a magnificent obsession- an Indian cricket league. If the Houston Texans could be valued at a billion dollars and Disney's Mighty Ducks could rake in millions despite being the worst performing team, why couldn't similar properties be created in India? To him the arithmetic of TV viewership and the almost-religious fervour that cricket triggered in India made immense business sense.

Modi proposed the Indian Cricket League first in the mid-1990s, when Madhavrao Scindia was BCCI chief. Modi Entertainment Network entered into a joint venture with US-based API Sponsorship for a new cricket league. The idea was to draw up a business proposition with sportscaster ESPN. He signed up players and created teams-Mumbai Stallions, Calcutta Tigers, Bangalore Braves, Hyderabad Hawks and, to please Scindia, Gwalior Cobras. It didn't work out, Modi claims, for reasons ranging from broadcasting issues to resistance from BCCI.

A few years later Modi gave it another try and the gameplan was hosted on the website of the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA). It failed again as "BCCI wanted to dictate everything from teams to players to who the broadcasters will be". This run-in brought him close to former BCCI chief and senior adviser to ICC Inderjit Singh Bindra. They decided the best way to make it work was to infiltrate BCCI. So, Modi found his way into PCA, becoming its vice-president. Using his business sense to dredge out dirty details about BCCI, he enabled Sharad Pawar to take over India's richest sports body.

Pawar's ascent, though, did not spell open sesame for Modi. It took some convincing on his part and the threat of a competing league hosted by Zee's Subhash Chandra for BCCI to agree. The jibe within BCCI is that it takes a Marwari to show the way to the bank. First it was Jagmohan Dalmiya, now it is Modi, and the common interlocutor in both cases was Bindra, who saw the need to bring corporates into the game. That was in October 2007. In six months and 18 days- from the idea to the first ball from Praveen Kumar at Bangalore-Modi scripted a "monster" of a success story that was great in its scale, sequencing and details. It is not for nothing that Bindra calls him "an outstanding doer and marketer". As Sanjay Jain, head of marketing, Bajaj Allianz, points out, "The moot point was timing. Modi got it right and creates a package that brought the whole family together in front of the TV set."

To start with, Modi corralled the 80 top ICC-ranked players from nine countries. Then he got down to the scheduling. The broadcast rights for India and abroad were sold for $1.02 billion (Rs 4,080 crore)-including $108 million (Rs 432 crore) in promotions-for 10 years. A prospectus was drawn up and 14 corporates entered the fray, eight of whom bagged a team each.

Of course, the auction has not been without controversy. Four of the owners have capillary links to BCCI. Chennai Super Kings is owned by India Cements, whose MD N. Srinivasan is also BCCI treasurer. Modi himself is alleged to be a venture capitalist in three teams-Rajasthan Royals, one of whose owners is his brother-in-law, a businessman from Africa; Kings XI, whose co-owner Mohit Burman's brother is married to Modi's step-daughter; and Kolkata Knight Riders. Modi denies it all: "The bids were open and transparent. It is not as if I could have got anyone any team. My acquaintance and relation with some owners is incidental." The clouds of speculation persist but Modi cannot be bothered.

Perhaps it is the Pawar factor, perhaps it is his ability to flirt with authority and court power points across party lines that gives Modi such confidence. He has thought everything through. Getting access to and managing stadia, for instance, would have been an issue, but by assuring local associations a share in the moolah, he got the facilities and also made use of their political clout to deal with law and order issues.

Consider the logistics to get a sense of the scale of Modi's groundwork. The League involved carting 1,000 people-eight teams, nearly 700 BCCI officials and 100 representatives of sponsors- across the country every day. Over 44 days, that meant 12,000 hotel room nights and 20,000 air tickets. "There was no way we were going to allow a team to be late. So, we tied up with ITC for accommodation and Kingfisher for flights," he says. Add to that two jumbo jets moving a 100-member crew across the country lugging tonnes of equipment. Modi himself logged 600 hours of flying in seven months-equivalent to circling the earth 20 times. His team executed all the logistics, down to the detail of transporting Pawar and Co by bus from Mumbai to Navi Mumbai for the final. And the Indian wonder for the world was that across 44 days there was no snafu, barring the power failure in Kolkata.

With success comes attention and there have been murmurs about Modi's impatience, bordering on the brazen, while dealing with BCCI officials, but IPL's goodwill has insulated him. He has found mentors in Pawar, Bindra and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, learning from them the virtues of being low-profile. The hyperactive Modi tends to answer e-mails, SMSes and questions at the same time, puffing on his Davidoff cigarettes. As Shane Warne and his team Rajasthan Royals walk away with the $1.2-million (Rs 4.8 crore) prize money, one wonders what is in it for Modi. Quick on the take, Modi says, "Living this dream." It may just be the truth but the question is bound to haunt him as much as the success of IPL will.

Unperturbed, Modi is planning a second knockout season from 2010. Although he denies it, the big picture includes plans to sell a franchise in Dubai and move some matches to the Emirates (after all, the travel time from Mumbai to Dubai and Mumbai to Kolkata is the same) before entering the Americas. For now, it's a well-earned, four-week vacation in Capri, off the Gulf of Naples. It is entirely conceivable that Modi will have another light bulb moment as he lounges in his favourite tog of white linen bermudas and pink tee. Knowing that in India sequels have a patchy record, he will also be thinking of replicating his exploits in 2009. After all, he can't afford to be billed a one-summer success.

(The article was published in the INDIA TODAY edition dated June 16, 2008)

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