New Delhi: In December 2008, just weeks after the Mumbai terror attacks shook India, the Champions League Twenty20 was dead before it could begin. Former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi now claims that cancellation set off a multi-hundred-million-dollar contractual showdown between him and Rupert Murdoch, one of the world’s most powerful media moguls.
“Rupert Murdoch became my second-biggest enemy,” Modi said in a recent interview with ANI, exposing a little-known chapter where cricket’s new-money empire held its ground against old-media royalty.
In September 2008, Modi had sold the CLT20 television rights to ESPN Star, owned by Murdoch’s News Corp, for 10 years at USD 900 million. The first five seasons were priced at USD 55 million annually, and the final five at USD 125 million each.
Then came the Mumbai attacks on 26 November 2008. The tournament, scheduled for 3-10 December, was postponed and then cancelled. The competition eventually debuted in September 2009.
But Modi maintained a hard contractual stance: “The minute the team touches down, the contract is live.” According to him, despite the cancellation, the broadcasters remained contractually obligated to honour their commitments.
“They lost a few hundred million dollars. But they still had to pay us,” Modi said.
Modi claimed Murdoch had tried to negotiate an exit from the CLT20 contract.
“Rupert tried to make me cancel the contract even when I left. And paid me hundreds of millions of dollars to cancel the contract… But I made another enemy.”
The CLT20 eventually debuted in 2009, but Modi claims ESPN Star bore the financial brunt. By 2015, when BCCI unilaterally scrapped the tournament, Modi alleged Murdoch and ESPN Star had secured an “illegal gain of USD 500 million” at BCCI’s expense.
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A longer tale of ‘revenge’
The tensions, according to Modi, predated the IPL itself. In the 1990s, his family had been involved in distributing ESPN’s cricket rights in India and had advised the channel to acquire global cricket telecast rights from the BCCI. After ESPN and Star merged into ESPN Star Sports, Star secured its own distribution channels in India, effectively sidelining the Modi family from the arrangement.
Modi has repeatedly suggested that these early business setbacks shaped his thinking
“I created IPL to take revenge from Rupert Murdoch,” he said in an earlier interview.
According to Modi, Murdoch’s vendetta later extended beyond the CLT20 controversy. In 2015, when the UK’s Sunday Times, also owned by Murdoch’s News Corp, broke the story about External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj allegedly helping Modi obtain UK travel documents, Modi saw a pattern.
“I will tell you why Sunday Times is after me? Because it is owned by Rupert Murdoch,” Modi told India Today, claiming the media baron had “an old axe to grind” with him over the IPL and the Champions League T20 row.
Modi is currently serving a lifetime ban imposed by the BCCI after being found guilty of misconduct, indiscipline, and financial irregularities following investigations into the early years of the IPL.
Keith Rupert Murdoch is an Australian-born American former business magnate, investor, and media mogul. He inherited a newspaper at age 22 after his father’s death and built News Corp into a global media company controlling The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, Fox News, and key cricket broadcasting rights across Asia. He stepped down as chairman in September 2023 at age 92.