Today, the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) announced two new Indian Premier League (IPL) franchisees from the cities Pune and Rajkot. These two teams will play for a period two years (2016, 2017 seasons) in the tournament. As both the IPL teams Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals were suspended for two years because their team owners Gurunath Meiyappan (Chennai) and Raj Kundra (Rajasthan) involved in betting and fixing scam, Pune and Rajkot franchisees will replace them.

In fresh bids in New Delhi on Tuesday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India announced that New Rising (Pune) and Intex (Rajkot) will be the new franchises. The new cities were chosen after conducting a reverse bidding process in which a franchise that claims the least bid wins. The Pune franchise was bought by Kolkata-based businessman Sanjeev Goenka’s company ‘New Rising’ while the Rajkot bid by Intex Mobiles.

However, both the franchisees did not ask for any assistance from BCCI. “They won’t be taking even a single penny from the BCCI, but they will be contributing from their side to the BCCI,” BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur told. On Tuesday, five bids were finally submitted from more than 20 companies showed interest. New Rising bid was the best, offering to pay Rs. 16 crore. Intex was the second best to pay Rs. 10 crore.

Keshav Bansal of Intex said, “Happy to make a start in IPL. We had to win the bid. We will see what happens after two years.” The BCCI recently introduced this unique bidding system aiming to reduce to bring structure to their process. IPL Chairman Rajiv Shukla said, “It will be a walk-in for a bid on December 8. The base price for reverse bid from central revenue pool is Rs. 40 crore and the party which bids for the lowest share from central revenue pool will be the winner of a new team.”

The new teams will now have the option to choose from the top five players each from Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals. This will be decided during a players’ draft on December 15. The trading window for the other six teams also starts on the same day. Both Pune and Rajkot will have a purse of Rs. 66 crore each to pick their players. The 10 cities that were initially shortlisted were Chennai, Ahmedabad, Ranchi, Rajkot, Dharamsala, Indore, Pune, Kanpur, Nagpur and Visakhapatnam.