Bloomberg Television Sep 20, 2026
With Rajesh Menon, CEO of Royal Challengers Bengaluru · Jon Gray, Chief Operating Officer at Blackstone · Harsha Bhogle, cricket commentator
A group that included Blackstone paid $1.75 billion this year for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru, one of 10 teams in a league 19 years old.
The leagues it gets compared with are 90 or 100 years old, and their players take a far larger share of the money. Indian Premier League payroll is among the smallest in world sport as a percentage of team revenue, which is a large part of why the franchises are worth buying.
"Any scarce resource has a premium to it. And if the scarce resource is growing, there's much more premium to it."
Rajesh Menon, CEO of Royal Challengers Bengaluru, on Bloomberg Television, runs the two-time defending champion of the Indian Premier League and came to the job from marketing. He built the brand the club sells, and on this segment he set out the five reasons he thinks an outside investor would buy in.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 8 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
A group including Blackstone paid $1.75 billion for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and the league is second only to the NFL on media rights per game
There are 10 teams for 1.5 billion people, which Gray calls a lot of eyeballs and a real scarcity
The league is 19 years old against 90 or 100 for the ones it is measured against, and runs only two and a half months a year
85% of the money comes from media, on Menon's account, so the growth case is a media case
Harsha Bhogle's warning is a plateau in rights values now that one company owns most of the Indian media landscape
The head of Netflix in India told him the company would bid for weekend games, not the whole package
Player pay is among the lowest in major world sport as a share of team revenue, and it would take a rebel to change it
Gray's macro case is an economy growing 7% with GDP per capita doubling every 10 years
1. A $1.75B Franchise Buy
Cricket was brought to India by the British and became a national obsession, and the show's framing is that the obsession is now an asset class. Blackstone joined a group that paid $1.75 billion for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
The scale of the fandom is the starting point
Close your eyes and dream of what is possible and then multiply it by any number that you want and you'll get an obsession for cricket in India. It's always been big, but it's just got bigger and bigger.
Harsha Bhogle
By the show's own measure, the purchase put Blackstone into the second most valuable sports league in the world on a per-game media rights basis, behind only the NFL. Gray, filmed at the team's ground, was frank about how much of the sport he has absorbed so far.
The new owner is still learning the rules
In India specifically, cricket is the passion. I'm still struggling with the rules and making slow progress on it. But now as an owner, part owner of a team, we've got to understand this.
Jon Gray
2. Only 10 Teams, 1.5B Fans
Gray's reason for the price is arithmetic rather than sentiment: a very large audience divided by a very small number of franchises.
10 teams, 1.5B people, two championships
But there are only 10 teams in a country with 1.5 billion people. That is a lot of eyeballs. And then this team in Bangalore has won the last two championships, won the second after we made the investment, has a terrific team, terrific management, and is in the fastest growing city in the country. So it all lined up for us.
Jon Gray
3. Five Days To Three Hours
The Indian Premier League plays a format that barely resembles the game the English brought over in the 18th century. A match lasts three hours rather than days, and each side gets 20 overs — 20 sets of six balls. Bhogle said the shortening is what opened the audience up.
The younger audience would not sit through five days
The younger generation in India couldn't be bothered 5 days of cricket. And so India took the 20 over game.
Harsha Bhogle
Three hours is a format the whole household can watch
So 20 overs cricket, perfect. And everyone can watch. The grandmother can watch. Your sister can watch. Your uncle can watch. The little kid can watch.
Harsha Bhogle
The show traced the modern popularity to 1983, when India beat a heavily favored West Indies to win the Cricket World Cup.
The 1983 win is what put children on the field
That was a watershed moment in Indian cricket. An entire nation rejoiced. And when something like that happens, entire nation rallies. The kids started playing, parents started encouraging them.
Harsha Bhogle
4. The Play Bold Philosophy
Menon, a former marketing executive, described the club's brand as a reading of the country rather than a slogan. India opened up, people moved from small towns to large ones, the startup boom arrived, and almost everyone who tried it failed.
The cultural problem the brand was built against is fear of failure
But when the Indian economy opened up, people tried to migrate from small town to big towns. Then came the startup boom and every Indian wanted to start their own business. And we all know saying one in a million succeeds. There was fear of failure.
Rajesh Menon
His answer to that is the club's Play Bold line, and the argument for it is that nobody finds out what is on the other side without trying.
Everybody knew the country had to move and nobody knew what came next
We all knew India has to move forward. People have to try. But as a human being, we don't know what's on the other side.
Rajesh Menon
The claim is that it is a belief system rather than a tagline
And that philosophy is young India's philosophy. It's not a philosophy of one region, one culture or one thing. So it's a philosophy of young India. And that resonated with the young India. And it was not a tagline. It was a belief system.
Rajesh Menon
5. A 19-Year-Old League
Gray's growth case is the American analogy plus the Indian economy underneath it.
An economy growing 7% doubles income per head every decade
An economy growing 7 percent, there's going to be a lot of wealth creation. And India's GDP per capita is going to, at this rate, double every 10 years.
Jon Gray
Demand is strong and the number of teams is fixed
So to me, there's a real scarcity around sports teams. So very strong demand and a finite number of teams to absorb that demand and this team in a particularly good city. So we feel very lucky to invest here.
Jon Gray
Menon set out his own case in numbered points: a consumer market of 1.5 billion, media penetration and media consumption both rising, and then the scarcity argument.
Scarcity carries a premium, and a growing scarce asset carries more
Number three is the scarce resource. Any scarce resource has a premium to it. And if the scarce resource is growing, there's much more premium to it.
Rajesh Menon
His fourth point is the league's age against its peers.
19 years old, against 90 or 100 elsewhere
The fourth aspect is it is just 19 years old, this league, whereas globally other leagues are 90, 100 years.
Rajesh Menon
And the fifth is calendar and format expansion: a season that currently runs two and a half months, and a women's competition that is smaller than it could be.
A two-and-a-half-month season could be four months
And this league is currently two and a half months. Think of this league becoming 4 months. Think of women's league becoming bigger. So I can see only opportunities.
Rajesh Menon
He also gave the revenue mix, which is what makes the media-rights question the whole question.
85% of the money comes from media today
But currently, if you look at it, 85 percent is coming from media.
Rajesh Menon
6. The Media Rights Risk
Bhogle's caution is the one part of the segment that argues against the price. Competition drove digital rights up to the point where no broadcaster could afford to be without them.
Rights became something a buyer could not afford not to own
The value of the digital rights through competition kept going up. It got to a stage where you cannot not have it, which is a win-win for the person selling the rights.
Harsha Bhogle
That, on his account, is how the last cycle ended badly for the buyer.
The last deal was not sustainable and the buyer knew it
The amount of money that Disney owned Star paid was not sustainable. They were going to make huge losses on it, but they just had to have it.
Harsha Bhogle
Television and digital rights had gone to two separate buyers; then the digital owner bought Star Sports outright, leaving one company holding most of the Indian media landscape and a very large rights bill. Bhogle's expectation for the next auction follows from that.
He expects the next package to be split rather than sold whole
So I am expecting the rights to be slightly divided.
Harsha Bhogle
He relayed one conversation as evidence of how a new bidder would come at it. This is Bhogle reporting what he was told, not Netflix's own statement on air.
Netflix's India head told him the interest is in weekend games only
We had the head of Netflix in India recently and he said we're not interested in bidding for the whole thing. But yes, only the weekend games. That would be very interesting for us.
Harsha Bhogle
7. The Cheapest Payroll
The show's own research is that European and American sports salaries have grown sharply while Indian Premier League cricketers are paid a fraction of that, and that player payroll as a percentage of team revenue is among the lowest in major global sports leagues. That gap is the cost side of the investment case.
The segment's answer to why it persists is that cricket was never a well-paid sport in India, so current pay looks generous against what came before. The speaker's example was a player on 25 crore rupees for six weeks of work who is, on that speaker's own estimate, worth 60 — and the point was that closing the gap would take a player willing to rebel and demand it. The transcript does not establish which of the two speakers in this part of the segment said it, so no name is attached here.
8. Buying Teams Abroad
Indian Premier League franchises have taken stakes in teams in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to the show, to build a footprint outside India. The larger opportunity, on the show's reading, is still domestic: a country of 28 states and 120 languages where rising incomes would push more spending toward leisure, and where cricket is the thing already being watched.
Menon closed on the same argument he opened with.
The product being sold is what young India wants
It's an aspiration of young India. We're not tapping into any other insights there. It is basically what young India wants. Indian economy is growing. The 1.4 billion, 1.5 billion population is young. Different industries are growing.
Rajesh Menon
Not playing bold means not moving forward
And hence, if you look at the philosophy, if you don't play bold, then we won't move forward.
Rajesh Menon
Bonus Insights
Gray directing the camera crew
The only unscripted exchange in the segment is Gray at the team's ground, telling the crew a shot would make good B-roll and confirming for Westin that what they were looking at was the club's logo. It is the one moment where the new owner is on camera as a visitor rather than an investor.
Who runs a match day
Menon's first line in the segment is about operations rather than brand: on game day the planning sits with the head coach and the support staff around him, not with the front office.
The archival clip is not part of the conversation
A short piece of vintage commentary runs under the history section. It is library footage rather than anyone the segment interviewed, so nothing in this summary rests on it.
Menon's bottom line is that an IPL franchise is a scarce asset attached to a young and growing consumer market, with 85% of its revenue still coming from media rights — which is also where Bhogle thinks the risk now sits.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Royal Challengers Bengaluru (Menon's club, two-time defending champion; a group including Blackstone paid $1.75 billion for it this year)
Blackstone (Part of the buying group; Gray's case is 10 teams, 1.5 billion people and a finite supply of franchises)
Indian Premier League (19 years old, two and a half months long, and second only to the NFL on media rights per game by the show's measure)
NFL (The only league above the IPL on per-game media rights value, and Gray's template for how rights values grow)
Disney and Star Sports (Bhogle said the amount Disney-owned Star paid was not sustainable, and that the digital rights owner later bought Star out)
Netflix (Its India head told Bhogle the company would bid for weekend games rather than the whole rights package)
Listen to the full episode
🔴 YouTube
Watch the full episode:
More Rajesh Menon interviews and podcast appearances
If this was worth your time, send it to someone closer to the industry than you are.
Get the latest market chatter as it happens: