Jaipur's Sale Is Stuck on Paperwork

NEWS / Jaipur's Sale Is Stuck on Paperwork

The Economic Times reported on 27 August that the Competition Commission of India has asked for more information on the proposed $1.65 billion acquisition of Rajasthan Royals. The filing, lodged on 30 July, was judged incomplete. The regulator has issued a Request for Information. Javed Farooqui and Maulik Vyas named the buyers as Westview Cricket Limited for the Lakshmi Mittal family and Poonawalla Sports and Fitness Private Limited for Adar Poonawalla.

The split on paper is blunt. Westview would hold about 75 percent. Poonawalla Sports would hold about 18 percent. Existing shareholders, including Manoj Badale, would keep about 7 percent. The targets in the filing are EM Sporting Holdings and Royal Multisport, the company that actually runs the IPL side. The Royals declined to comment. Legal voices told ET the commission can ask about shareholding, affiliates and any overlap the buyers insist does not exist.

This is not a new bid. It is the same May transaction hitting the one Indian regulator that can stop a cricket sale without ever watching a ball. The parties have already told the market they expect a third-quarter 2026 close, subject to the BCCI, the CCI and the IPL Governing Council. An RFI does not cancel that calendar. It does start a clock the buyers no longer control.

Why it matters

On 3 May the Mittal family and Poonawalla announced a definitive agreement to buy the Royals portfolio, including Paarl in the SA20 and Barbados in the CPL. ESPNcricinfo and The Hindu carried the joint statement. Aditya Mittal and Vanisha Mittal-Bhatia were named to the new board with their father, Poonawalla and Badale. RedBird and Lachlan Murdoch were on the way out.

That announcement itself was a rewrite. In March a US consortium led by Kal Somani, with Rob Walton and the Hamp family, had been reported as the winning $1.63 billion bid. That group later said it had been the lead from start to finish and still lost. The Mittal paper is the deal that survived. It is also the deal that has now been told its first filing was not enough.

RCB's $1.78 billion sale already has CCI clearance. Jaipur does not. Two original IPL clubs went on the block in the same year. Only one of them has a regulator willing to say the paperwork is clean. The other is answering questions while its dressing room plans 2027 under owners who have not yet been allowed to finish buying the building.

RS9 IPL analysis

An RFI is the least dramatic way to delay a billion-dollar sports sale. No dawn raid. No public veto. Just a letter that says send the rest. For a league that now prices clubs like European football, that letter is the story. It tells you the IPL's second-biggest 2026 transaction is still a proposal, not a handover.

The cricket question is uglier than the legal one. Sooryavanshi's Orange Cap, Jaiswal's denial, Sangakkara's bench and Parag's captaincy all sit on a franchise whose owners are changing, then not changing, then answering a commission. Players do not wait for RFIs. Agents do not wait either. A club in regulatory limbo becomes a rumour factory because nobody in the building can sign the next five-year cheque with a straight face.

Mittal money will probably get this done. Poonawalla money will help. Badale staying on for 7 percent is the political lubricant the BCCI likes: a familiar name on a new cap table. None of that is the same as closing. Q3 2026 has two days of August left and a whole of September. If the buyers treat the RFI as a form, they close. If they treat it as noise, the Somani farce gets a sequel with better lawyers.

What to watch next

The next public facts are an answer to the RFI, a CCI clearance notice, and then the BCCI and IPL Governing Council. Until one of those documents appears, the Royals' 2027 roster talk is happening in a club that is still, on the filings that matter, for sale.