Apollo Tyres becomes Team India’s New Jersey sponsor in ₹579 crore deal

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was obliged to find a new jersey sponsor when Dream11 was disqualified from eligibility under the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act. The previous ₹358 crore agreement with Dream11 was canceled, and the BCCI had to issue a new tender. The eligibility regulations excluded companies from "real money gaming, a cryptocurrency business model, betting, tobacco, and alcohol" sectors. After competing against each other, multiple established Indian corporates submitted bids for the sponsorship, and Apollo Tyres secured the much-anticipated sponsorship rights.

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Apollo Tyres was the successful bidder for the jersey sponsorship rights of India’s men's and women's cricket teams until 2027. The sponsorship was valued at roughly ₹579 crore, and Apollo Tyres pledged ₹4.5 crore for each bilateral game and ₹1.72 crore for each ICC fixture. This was greater than bids received from Canva and JK Cement. The sponsorship consisted of 121 bilateral matches and 20 ICC fixtures. Beginning this October, Apollo’s branding will appear on India’s jerseys during the highly publicized Test series against the West Indies, only in October.

Comparative Bid Details for India's New Jersey sponsor

The table above show why Apollo Tyres has been awarded the rights. Even though Canva was slightly higher in terms of rate for ICC events, Apollo's higher bilateral match bid and overall package took it to another level.

There were again multiple areas where the tender was shaped with specific guidelines to meet government compliance and ethical compatibility. BCCI kept  sensitive categories such as gaming/bitcoin/betting, alcohol and tobacco brands from the running. It also kept banks, financial institutions and alcohol brands, carbonated and non-carbonated beverages and sportswear manufacturers from bidding on the jersey rights. The compliance and ethical areas helped thin out the process allowing manufacturing and lifestyle brands to hop in. Compliance was assured which allowed Apollo Tyres to provide a better financial package by meeting compliance in the tender process instead of just relying on the financial package to win the process.

The contract should get Apollo Tyres unmatched exposure as Team India has over 140 international matches scheduled to take place across formats throughout the sponsorship period. The brand will even appear on both men's and women's jersey, meaning millions of fans around the world will be exposed to the brand. For BCCI, this sponsorship helps secure a major amount of revenue for the BCCI to continue to maintain its advantage at generating some of the biggest commercial partnerships in the history of world cricket even after the departure from Dream11.

Way for Apollo Tyers with BCCI

In a matter of weeks, Team India supporters will see players take the field in new playing kits that display the insignia of Apollo Tyres. The collaboration does not stop with on-field branding, but extends to integrated marketing campaigns, television commercials, and social media tie-ins. This gives Apollo Tyres the opportunity to be aligned with one of the most powerful sports brands on the planet—Team India—and increase its brand presence both in India and around the world.

In this arrangement, it is either the BCCI's vision or adaptability, or perhaps a combination of both, that resulted in a fantastic outcome that represents the BCCI's ability to adapt to modification of its regulations while still extracting maximum commercial value. The Apollo Tyres deal ensures both financial support and the dawn of a new era in sponsorship professionally in cricket in India. Perhaps this model represents the beginning of dispelling the traditional models of sponsorships in the cricketing space whereby corporate brands and cricketing excellence can go hand-in-hand to the benefit of players, sponsors, and the cricket board.