 "Pakistan Super League will get franchises from Sialkot and Hyderabad. X/pslt20")
Pakistan Super League (PSL) has expanded to eight teams after 10 seasons with six and the next edition is set to have teams from Hyderabad and Sialkot apart from the existing franchises from Islamabad (United), Karachi (Kings), Lahore (Qalandars), Peshawar (Zalmi), and Quetta (Gladiators).
Hyderabad and Sialkot found the biggest bids in the auction held on Thursday at Islamabad’s Jinnah Convention Centre. US-based aviation and healthcare company FKS and the real estate consortium based in Australia OZ Developers successfully bid for the new teams.
Record prices in PSL history
The Pakistan Cricket Board had set a base price of PKR 1.1 billion for the franchises. This is the fee that the owners will have had to pay to the PCB annually for the right to operate the franchise for ten years.
OZ Developers put forward a massive Rs1.85 billion bid to beat software company i2c and win the Sialkot franchise. I2c also went hard for the next franchise on offer but FKS beat them with a final bid of PKR 1.75 billion to acquire the Hyderabad team.
Both of these are comfortably the highest franchise fee in the history of the league which began in 2015. The highest franchise fee before this was Lahore Qalandars’ PKR 670 million. The bids help the PSL put forward a strong claim to become the second biggest T20 league in the world behind the Indian Premier League (IPL).
There still remains a massive gap between IPL and all other T20 leagues in the world including the PSL. The combined fee of the two new franchises at the PSL is going to be around INR 115 crore while the Lucknow franchise was sold for INR 7,090 crore in 2022.
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View AllMultan franchise owner opts out
The Multan franchise is set to be up for sale next year after its ex-owner Ali Tareen fell out with PCB. Tareen was expected to participate in the auction on Thursday as well. However, he announced that instead of buying another team, he would once again try to get the Multan franchise back when it is on sale next year.