Many buyers for PPL teams, claims PCB

The Pakistan Cricket Board has got a tremendous response to buy franchise rights/sponsor teams in the planned Pakistan Premier League Twenty20 competition.

A senior official of the Board Tuesday said the only thing holding up the organisation of the Pakistan edition of the successful Indian Premier League was finding a slot in the packed Future Tours Programme of the International Cricket Council (ICC).

"I can tell you this much the response from companies and organisations and even individuals to buy franchise rights or sponsor teams in the PPL have been beyond our expectations," the official said.

"We are trying to find a suitable slot in 2009 when teams are free and most players are available because we also want the involvement of overseas players in the PPL," he stated.

The official said the Board had studied closely the model for the IPL and was confident of repeating the same success in the PPL.

"We want to follow the same concept of selling franchise and sponsorship rights of the participating city teams and selling the title and broadcast rights separately," he said.

"The companies and organisations we have given a presentation too have shown great interest and want the involvement of some foreign players not on the scale of the IPL but to a big extent to make the PPL attractive and competitive for the people," he added.

The PCB official said Twenty20 cricket even at the domestic level had been a great success in Pakistan and in fact it was Pakistan who were among the first countries to launch a

domestic twenty20 tournament.

"The people are attracted to this form of the sport and we have had big crowds for our domestic Twenty20 event. But we want to hold the PPL on a bigger scale with more glitz and

glamour," he said.

"The companies, organisations and individuals are willing but first we have to find a suitable time slot to launch our product in a proper manner," he said.

He said the PPL would feature in the talks with prospective bidders for the media rights of Pakistan cricket for the next five years.

"Obviously, the IPL is on a much bigger scale as India has a big commercial and marketing market. But we think the PPL can also be done successfully."