IPL sells two new franchises for eye-watering sum

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has unveiled two new teams for the Twenty20 competition, with the Lucknow and Ahmedabad franchises sold for a combined 127.15 billion Indian rupees ($A2.3 billion) in Dubai on Monday.

The RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, which owned the now-defunct Pune franchise for two IPL campaigns, bid 70.9 bn Indian rupees ($A1.3 billion) for the Lucknow outfit.

Irelia Company Pte. Ltd. (CVC Capital Partners) bid a little over 56 bn Indian rupees ($A1 billion) for the Ahmedabad side.

Irelia, which has offices in Europe, Asia and the Americas, has been involved in Formula 1 and recently bought stakes in Spain's football league, La Liga.

Both teams will compete in the competition from the 2022 edition, which will have 10 teams and 74 matches with each side playing seven home and seven away games.

The current eight-team model features a total of 60 games, also made up of seven home and seven away games per side plus finals.

The news comes ahead of the upcoming 'mega auction', where the majority of players will be added to the pool of available talent for franchises to bid on.

The league had approved a proposal in December to add two franchises to the world's richest Twenty20 competition, which has an estimated brand value of $US6.8 bn ($A9.1 bn).

There were seven other bidders for the two new franchises that also included Avram Glazer's Lancer Capital. The Glazer family owns Manchester United.

"It is heartening to see the inclusion of two new teams at such a high valuation, and it reiterates the cricketing and financial strength of our cricket ecosystem," BCCI President, Sourav Ganguly said.

" ... the inclusion of two new teams will bring more domestic cricketers from our country to the global stage."

The BCCI had set the base price for the new teams at 20 billion Indian rupees ($A355 million).