Yes, that's true and thats what BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) has planned for its new series which is Indian Premier League (IPL), and you guessed it right 'it's more or less similar to EPL (English premier League)'.

But that's not what this is all about, it about owing your own team in IPL for a life time and you get to select your players from the pool of players including the top 50 cricketers according to ICC's current rankings and every player in the current Indian team.

The BCCI has asked corporates to pay between $50 million and $60 million (Rs 200 crore to Rs 240 crore) to own an IPL team (for lifetime). In turn, the BCCI will offer companies a revenue share from stadium advertising and gate money.

The IPL will include domestic and foreign teams that will play tournaments, including in the Twenty20 format. Under the Twenty20 format, the company is not a sponsor but the owner of the team. Apart from the ownership amount, a company will have to deal separately with each cricketer it wants in its team. Players ranked higher up on the listings will command as much as $300,000 while those lower down the rung can take home roughly $100,000.

Matches under the IPL banner are scheduled to be played during April 2008. Under the format, interested parties can bid for one of the eight teams that will represent an Indian city. Until now, 90 bidders have expressed their intention to participate in the auctioning that will be telecast on television. Of them are industrialists Anil Ambani and Vijay Mallya, football teams from the English Premier League, some members of the American National Basketball Association, two foreign banks with operations in India and as yet unnamed investment bankers are among those who have expressed interest in owning cricket teams in India.

Moreover, BCCI has also planned to list IPL teams in Stock market and it is going to get very exciting if this proposal to list the cricket teams in the stock exchanges goes trough.

Source: (Business Standard, Times)