The $1.65bn sale of Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket team the Rajasthan Royals, alongside sister franchises Barbados Royals and Paarl Royals, made headlines this month, as the second billion-dollar-plus IPL franchise sale so far this year.
The deal followed an auction process in which Macfarlanes advised Royal Sports Group on the sell-side, and Latham & Watkins advised Lakshmi Mittal and the Mittal family on the buy-side.
The Mittal-led consortium, which included businessman Adar Poonawalla (advised by Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas), ultimately emerged as the winning bidder when the deal closed on 3 May.
LB caught up with Macfarlanes corporate partners Tom Rose and Richard Burrows to discuss the firm’s role in a transaction reflecting the growing convergence between elite sport and big law.
‘It’s a cool deal,’ says Rose. ‘Billion-plus valuation, cricket team — it’s one we’ll look back on in a few years and be really pleased to have been part of.’
Macfarlanes was instructed in Q4 last year, with Rose citing his firm’s experience in leading competitive sell-side auctions and multi-jurisdictional transactions as key factors in securing the mandate. Other recent sell-side auction roles for the firm include advising private markets data provider Preqin on its £2.55bn sale to BlackRock in 2024, and acting for Banco de Sabadell on the £2.65bn sale of TSB Banking Group to Banco Santander last year.
The Royals deal spanned three franchises across India, the Caribbean and South Africa, and involved a wide seller group including Emerging Media Ventures, Blenheim Chalcot, RedBird Capital Partners and Blue Water Ltd.
‘It was very much a global deal,’ says Rose (pictured right). ‘We coordinated local counsel in South Africa, Barbados, St Lucia and Mauritius. We had shareholders on our side and target entities across multiple jurisdictions, from the US to Australia, which made for some interesting call times.’
Burrows says the breadth of the seller group added another layer of complexity: ‘Often you may have a lead investor with a passive financial backer. Here we were managing a much broader shareholder base, which made it very interesting.’
‘You need to ensure everyone is updated at the right time, and that everyone has the opportunity to have their say,’ he adds.
‘It’s harder than it looks,’ Rose says of the sale process. ‘In a bilateral deal you can go on that journey with your counterparty. In an auction with multiple bidders, all with different priorities, the main challenge is probably defining what is being sold and driving everyone toward price.’
Rose says that it was widely reported that the popularity of the IPL ensured there was a lot of interest in the auction with, inevitably, some bidders being more sophisticated than others.
He adds that communication risks also increase with scale: ‘With any sell-side auction, leaks complicate everything, and on this occasion a number of details came out in the press.’
The deal closed on a Sunday after a ‘final push’ to get it over the line. A US-based consortium led by Arizona entrepreneur Kal Somani was also in the running and later raised concerns after losing out. Rose and Burrows declined to comment.
Macfarlanes has become increasingly active in sports transactions, including advising on Sheikh Jassim’s 2023 bid for Manchester United, Racing Bulls Formula One Team on employment and IP matters, Surrey County Cricket Club on its partnership with Reliance to acquire The Hundred’s Oval Invincibles (now MI London), and Ares Capital Corporation on the administration of owner of owner of multiple football clubs Eagle Football Holdings Bidco in March.
Burrows (pictured left) says sports work is ‘driving activity across corporate, commercial, competition, tax and disputes teams,’ with the firm ‘absolutely expecting to see more activity in this area over the next 12 to 24 months.’ He adds that Macfarlanes’ banking practice is increasingly involved as regulatory approvals and leverage structuring become more complex, particularly in private credit-backed transactions.
The firm’s disputes practice has already played a prominent role in the sector, having successfully defended the PGA European Tour in 2023 against claims brought by a number of high-profile professional golfers challenging fines and suspensions imposed following their participation in the rival LIV Golf series.
With sports investment increasingly attractive to both private capital (Apollo, Blackstone and KKR have all announced major deals in the sector this year) and billionaire investors who Rose, says, might look at sports franchises beyond the bottom line, seeing them as ‘dynastic assets,’ Macfarlanes believes its historic mix of corporate and private client expertise positions it well:
‘In terms of how capital is being deployed, we’re seeing activity from both institutional capital and private wealth, with family offices investing alongside funds and forming consortia. That creates a dynamic where relatively few firms can act across all participants — but we can.’
Photo by Mustafa Fatemi on Unsplash
