RR back out, KKR, GMR place bids for Indian Super League

I guess SRK wanted to be the only owner and have the say on the team he was bidding for. Feel bad for him for not be able to win it over. He was talking about owning a football team since the first year of the IPL itself. Hope somehow he will manage to own one in the near future...

The truth is they never bid for a team:

Showdown hoax
By Vijay Tagore, Bangalore Mirror Bureau | Apr 15, 2014, 02.00 AM IST

Talks about Ganguly vs SRK for an ISL team were mere speculations as KKR never bid for a franchise

The much-anticipated clash of titans for the Kolkata franchise of the Indian Super League (ISL) petered into a non-event as the Shah Rukh Khan-Sourav Ganguly confrontation never happened. It was always a one-horse race.

Before the owners of the eight ISL teams were announced on Sunday, there was a lot of speculation in the media about the likely showdown between Ganguly and King Khan for the Kolkata franchise.

However, it was announced that a consortium consisting of Spanish team Athletico Madrid, Harshavardhan Neotia, Sanjeev Goenka and Utsav Parekh besides Ganguly was awarded the franchise and no details about the likely competitors was given in the statement released by IMG-Reliance.

And it now turns out that the former Indian skipper won the rights for the Kolkata team not because his was the best bid but for the fact that there was no competition.

Shah Rukh Khan owned Kolkata Knight Riders never made a bid for the league and reports of KKR's interest and involvement in the league were mere speculations.

Confirmed KKR CEO Venky Mysore, "We studied the property thoroughly. We were keen for a football team for Kolkata but we found out that it was not economically viable."

The reason KKR did not make their disinterest public was because the organisers feared negative publicity.

Mysore, who is currently with the KKR team in Abu Dhabi, confirmed that they were told to lie low till the final announcement.
It is being felt that the ISL will need huge investments in the first three years during which period the teams could incur losses up to Rs 50 crore. That is one of the reasons why KKR backed out from the sporting property.

So when Shah Rukh Khan declared that he wanted to have a football team for the people of Kolkata, he was actually not speaking with conviction. As he himself would admit, he was prevailed over by his team of hard-nosed professionals.

Promoted by IMG Reliance and Star Sports, the franchise-based IPL-style football league has seven other teams from Mumbai, Goa, Kochi, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune and Guwahati. The league will be played on home and away basis sometime in September.

www.bangaloremirror.com/sports/cricket/Showdown-hoax/articleshow/33752845.cms

^ Oh! This would be a huge risk for him considering he doesn't want outside partners with him. Also him having a team already with two film companies he is planning to expand!! I don't know I'm just quite sure SRK studied the situation well and couldn't go beyond his limit or whatever bid he went with if there ever was. He was pretty clear in all his latest interviews that he will own a football team soon and is hoping so much for it. Actually I see him more disappointed than anyone else. He had such sport expand plan since the first year of IPL as I said.