Today, KKR is one of the biggest brands in the IPL. Millions of fans, and full houses at the Eden Gardens are the norm. Shah Rukh Khan is KKR and, vice versa. But could it have been different when things started? Was it always this smooth? There is a story that makes matters fascinating. It is a classic what-could-have-been story.
In fact, it is fair to say that Lalit Modi himself wasn’t convinced about how many bids he would get ahead of the first season of the IPL in 2008. That’s why he had reached out through personal contacts to all of India’s leading corporates and had invited them to the bidding.
“We got a call from him two days before the bids were to be opened,” said a senior leader from Sahara India. “While the rule was that bids were to be submitted 48 hours before, Modi was making these calls because he was unsure of the response. I was asked by Subrata Roy Sahara to travel personally and put in a bid. In fact, I handed the bid myself to Lalit Modi and he accepted it the day before the bidding. We had bid for two cities, our first bid was for Kolkata and second was for Kanpur.
“However, just before the bids were opened, a couple of the other bidders objected to our bid saying we were late and the bid couldn’t be termed legal. Whether this was done deliberately or if it was stage managed, I don’t know. But what I can tell you is that had our bid been deemed legal, we would have owned the Kolkata team for we had put in the highest bid.”
While it is impossible to cross-check the truth associated with this story, the source was adamant. “You can cross-check with people in the know,” he told me. “They will corroborate what I am saying.”
How and why Modi accepted a late bid, only to disqualify it later, is not something I have an answer to. Besides Sahara, two other bids, those of ICICI Prudential and the Future Group, were also cancelled for not being on time.
In hindsight, it is a call that has worked extremely well. Kolkata got Shah Rukh Khan and vice versa. His presence at the Eden Gardens has been a major attraction for the IPL and, especially in the initial years, Shah Rukh was instrumental in getting a strong Bollywood entourage to every KKR game, which served as a major vehicle for fan engagement.
What Shah Rukh has been able to do is add much to the KKR brand. Even if the team doesn’t have a star of the stature of MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma, it is still one of the most visible IPL franchises. The credit for that has to go to Shah Rukh Khan. He was the one who brought in the star power and made the brand strong in the last decade and a half. He himself is deeply invested in the brand, and now, there is no looking back.