It has taken place during its most recent season, the Indian Premier League’s biggest ownership deal and yet at the heart of it all is a man whom most cricket fans had never heard of until recently. Technology entrepreneur Kal Somani, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, has led a consortium that has agreed to buy the Rajasthan Royals IPL franchise for $1.63 billion (around ₹15,290 crore). The agreement is pending approval from the BCCI and, subject to that, is due to come into effect after 2026 IPL season with the current management expected to continue running operations until then.
The valuation makes Rajasthan Royals the first IPL franchise to be worth $1 billion or more, a staggering increase from the $67 million price tag that the team fetched when it was sold in 2007, making it the least expensive of the eight founding franchises.
A Slow Roll Into the Royals
Somani was not a stranger to the franchise. He invested in the Royals as a minority stakeholder in 2021, and said then that he saw “huge potential" in the IPL and was excited about where "this amazing league is headed.” That bet on the ground floor has since matured into controlling ownership of one of the league’s most storied franchises.
The franchise was previously owned by Emerging Media Ventures, the framework behind a British-Indian businessman Manoj Badale having owned 65% of the club.
Who Backs the Consortium?
Somani’s consortium boasts some heavyweight names in global sports ownership. Among the backers is Rob Walton, the son of Sam Walton, who founded Walmart. Walton, who was 81, had been chairman of Walmart from 1999 to 2015 and in 2022 headed a group that bought the NFL’s Denver Broncos for a record $4.65 billion. He's also a 10% owner in Major League Baseball's Arizona Diamondbacks.
The final member of the consortium is the Hamp family. Locked in as the principal owner and chair of the N.F.L.’s Detroit Lions, Sheila Ford Hamp leads a group that has decades of knowledge about owning an American professional sports franchise. The family is linked to both the Ford Motor Company and the Firestone family.
Who Is Kal Somani?
Kal Somani, who is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, has spent the past 15 years developing companies at the crossroads of technology, data privacy and governance. He is the founder of a global technology services firm, IntraEdge, which provide consulting, talent solutions and training to Fortune 100 & Fortune 500 companies as well as Truyo and Truyo. AI, specialized overall data privacy compliance and ethical AI governance platform as well as Academian a digital learning operating education technology company.
His own reported history dates back to a small town in India, where he studied electronics and telecommunications before moving to the United States in 1998. That immigrant-to-entrepreneur path has led to a career of practical, high-impact technology ventures instead of flashy consumer brands.
Sports Investment as a Strategic Play
Somani’s sports interests extend much beyond cricket. He’s a co-owner of Motor City Golf Club, a Detroit-based team that will join Tomorrow’s Golf League (TGL) in 2027, the tech-augmented format of golf created with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy as partners at the PGA Tour. He was also an early TMRW Sports investor, the company which is behind TGL.
The group also has interests in the Paarl Royals in the SA20 and Barbados Royals in the Caribbean Premier League through this Somani-led consortium, very much a deliberate strategy to create a global cricket portfolio all tied under the weight behind one brand, namely Royals. This reflects the growing trend of investors building multi-sport ownership strategies across global sports properties.
A Competitive Bidding Process
Somani-led group triumphed over an especially competitive field. Other contenders for the trophy reportedly include Aditya Birla Group, the Mittal family led by ArcelorMittal chief executive officer Aditya Mittal and a consortium that includes US investor David Blitzer. There were previous reports which stated that the board of Rajasthan Royals rejected a $1.7 billion offer from Columbia Pacific Capital Partners over concerns about execution.
What This Means for the IPL
The $1.63 billion price tag that is reflective of how far the IPL has come as a global brand, according to a source in the know of developments ahead of official announcement by BCCI. For context, the Lucknow Super Giants sold to the RPSG Group for slightly over ₹7,000 crore in 2021, less than half of where the Royals are currently valued, highlighting how much value franchises have accumulated in just five years.
Sourav Ganguly, the former B.C.C.I. president said of the deal: “It’s great news for the I.P.L. — mind-blowing numbers.”
The IPL ownership landscape still has some more shuffling to do. The defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru are also on the block and their deal is widely expected to surpass $2 billion.
Final Thoughts
What Kal Somani has achieved is more than just a business deal, it is a statement of where the IPL is in the landscape of world sport. Ten years ago, it would have been hard to imagine an American-led bidding consortium paying $1.63 billion for a team in the Indian cricket league that was supported by an heir to Walmart fortune and the owner of an N.F.L. franchise. (The fact that this has happened, and that it wasn’t even the highest bid on the table, says a lot about how the league has transformed into a true global sports property.)
Somani himself is an interesting archetype for this new era of IPL ownership, not a billionaire industrialist or film mogul, but a technology entrepreneur who has built companies across AI, data privacy and edtech. And he eased his way into the Rajasthan Royals as a minority investor in 2021, patiently and intentionally. Now the buyout is anything but small. The true story to follow in the coming seasons will be whether he can apply his tech savvy to franchise-building success on and off the field.
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