The Finger Wag – Athletes using Twitter and Social Media to their Disadvantage

Let me start this story with some words about myself. I don’t know a lot about sports that don’t happen within the United States. This includes soccer (I am trying to follow it more, that’s a story for another time). I probably do know more about IPL (Indian Premier League) cricket than I do about soccer because a friend of mine was born in India and still follows it closely.

Here is what I do know:

Cricket is huge – It is a multi-billion dollar business. It eclipses a lot of US sports franchises in revenue and viewership. It doesn’t quite match up to soccer but it isn’t as far behind as you would think.

Twenty20 Cricket - The stereotype that most American’s have of cricket being a multiple day event is slowly going away. The formation of Twenty20 cricket has brought match times down to about 3 and half hours. The IPL is a Twenty20 Cricket league. A lot of people don’t like this version of the game. It is seen as not being pure to the way cricket was meant to be played and pandering to a larger (worldwide) audience. There is also a lot more US style fanfare with cheerleaders and pre-game fireworks.

The IPL is big business - The franchise Pune was bought by Sahara Adventure Sports group for $370 million dollars. According to Forbes that would place it at about the forty-first richest franchise if it was in the United States, worth more than the Chicago Bulls, San Antonio Spurs and every single NHL franchise. Since the IPL’s birth franchises have been bought by public entities which have been known to include many Bollywood stars and billionaire entrepreneurs. The UK-based brand consultancy, Brand Finance, has valued the IPL at $4.13 billion in 2010.

You are probably asking yourself, “How does all this relate to social media?”.

The commissioner of the IPL has a twitter account and last week all hell broke loose.

The IPL recently awarded a franchise to Rendezvous Sports World (RSV). According to Wikipedia Rendezvous Sports World Limited is a consortium made up of multiple companies. It had made the winning bid of USD 333 million in a global invitation to tender process called by the IPL for two new franchises from IPL season 2011. What does this all mean?

Since it’s a group made of multiple companies it is said there was a confidentiality agreement in place that the buying parties would not be named. If such an agreement exists it was breached in grand fashion last week:

LalitKModi

(Lalit Kumar Modi)

A lot of you asking shareholders and events surrounding the kochi team. I am compilling a note shortly and will put an offical release soon On 10:16 AM Apr 11th 2010 from UberTwitter

LalitKModi

(Lalit Kumar Modi)

25% of kochi team is given free to Rendezvous sports for life.The same equity is non dilutable in prepetuity.What does that mean? Why ? Wait On 10:19 AM Apr 11th 2010 from UberTwitter

LalitKModi

(Lalit Kumar Modi)

Will disclose those details soon. On 10:20 AM Apr 11th 2010 from UberTwitter

LalitKModi

(Lalit Kumar Modi)

Who are the shareholders of rendezvous. And why have they been given this 100's of million dollar bonanza ? On 10:21 AM Apr 11th 2010 from UberTwitter

LalitKModi

(Lalit Kumar Modi)

Kochi shareholders are: Rendezvous 25% free, Rendezvous 1%,Anchor 27%, Parinee 26%, Film waves combine 12%,Anand Shyam 8%,Vivek venugopal 1% On 10:29 AM Apr 11th 2010 from UberTwitter

LalitKModi

(Lalit Kumar Modi)

Rendezvous free equity - held by kisan,shailender & pushpa gaikwad,Sunanda pushkar,Puja gulathi,jayant kotalwar,vishnu prasad,sundip agarwal On 10:33 AM Apr 11th 2010 from UberTwitter

Due to this twitter explosion there are now lawsuits going back and forth between the RSV and the IPL. This was not the biggest piece of news the commissioner broke that day. He continues with the big bombshell:

LalitKModi

(Lalit Kumar Modi)

@xxxDEVxxx a big?I was told by him not to get into who owns rendezvous.Specially Sunanda Pushkar.Why?The same has been minuted in my records On 10:56 AM Apr 11th 2010 from UberTwitter in reply to Roshan Dev

Who is Sunanda Pushkar? She is the longtime female companion of Dr. Shashi Tharoor. Once again, according to Wikipedia:

Dr. Shashi Tharoor had a long career working in the United Nations as the Director of Communications and Special Projects and Executive Assistant to the Security-General Kofi Annan. He was working in the UN in some capacity from 1978-2007. He then became the Minister of State for External Affairs of the Government of India and is a member of the Indian Parliament from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala. That was until April 18, 2010.

It appears that a major player in securing RSV this IPL franchise was Tharoor and now his girlfriend had a 4.5% sweat equity (no money put in, just a share of a company for work done) in this 333 million dollar franchise. Do the math, that’s quite a large sum of a quickly growing business. Rumors say that this was given to the girlfriend for the work Tharoor did in getting the conglomerate RSV together.

Amid this pressure, once again all brought on by the commissioner of the league, Tharoor stepped down.

Today it was announced that since all this information was leaked finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has announced a full investigation into the IPL. This includes allegations of betting and money laundering. This morning there was an income tax raid on the IPL offices looking for evidence.

The commissioner had this to say on his twitter:

LalitKModi

(Lalit Kumar Modi)

Lots in media - speculations. welcome all investigation - ready to extend all cooperation. On 11:57 AM Apr 19th 2010 from UberTwitter

I have a feeling this story is long from over.