The Indian Premier League (IPL) found its title sponsor for the 2020 season as fantasy sports platform Dream11 bagged the rights with an INR 222 crore bid for this season. The deal has had its fair share of criticism because of Dream11’s part-Chinese ownership. Though the brand has claimed itself to be ‘all Indian’, Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB) secretary Aditya Verma feels the entire association is against PM Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’.
“As a well-wisher of Indian sports, I wish and pray that IPL 13 is held successfully in the UAE. However, with Dream11 becoming the title sponsor of IPL, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’ will be a bit shattered as Dream11 is a Chinese company. It has also come to fore that the company has a huge investment in one of the IPL franchises,” Verma told IANS.
While VIVO withdrew its title sponsorship for this season, it hopes to resume the agreement from the next season while also hoping that the Sino-India conflict on the border would also have come to a fruitful conclusion by that time.
As a matter of fact, Dream11 is said to have about 20 to 25 percent of ownership of Chinese technology giant Tencent. With the stakes being ‘minor’, the brand portrays itself to be entirely Indian, which is what made it eligible to even apply for the title sponsorship.
