MUMBAI: The Indian Premier League (IPL) player auction, which will see 183 players from countries like England being auctioned to franchises, will take place in Bangalore on 4 February.

The proceedings, to start at 11 am, will air live on Max, the official broadcaster of the IPL.

The IPL Governing Council has shortlisted 183 players for the upcoming auction, including 25 Zimbabweans. England off spinner Graeme Swann has the highest reserve price of $400,000.
 
James Anderson and Australian fast bowler Mitchell Johnson were placed in the $300,000 bracket. Former Australian spinners Brad Hogg and Stuart MacGill and former Pakistan all rounder Azhar Mahmood have attracted reserve prices of $100,000.

The auction will be conducted by Richard Madley, a professional auctioneer from England who has conducted each of the previous IPL player auctions.

IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla said, ?Fans of the sport, based in India and elsewhere, will be following the happenings with a lot of interest. The auction sets the stage for what promises to be an absorbing fifth season of the tournament. The developments during the first trading window have given us an idea of the varied pproaches that the teams have adopted for the forthcoming season. The Auction will give us a deeper insight into the same.?

The opening match of IPL 2012 will take place on 4 April in Chennai.

MUMBAI: The fifth season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will commence in Chennai on 4 April 2012.

The season will revert to the ?home and away? format, with each of the nine franchises playing 16 matches. There will be four Play-off matches - a total of 76 matches.

The Play-off matches will be held in Bangalore and Chennai, with the final to be played in Chennai on Sunday, 27 May 2012.

The 2012 Player Auction for the players who used to play for the Kochi Tuskers Kerala franchise will be held in late January / early February. Each franchise will have an auction purse of $2 million to spend on players in the 2012 auction.

For the 2012, 2013 seasons, the maximum squad size will be increased to 33, and the cap on the number of overseas players in the squad increased to 11.

The regulation that only four overseas players may be in the playing XI is unchanged. The trading window will open on 15 December 2011 and run through to 20 January 2012. There will be a short second trading window after the Player Auction.

The trading regulations will be as per previous seasons. There will be no financial cap on trading. Franchises can only add to their squad, by way of trading, a maximum of four players who were bought in the 2011 Auction, and they must stay within the squad composition regulations at all times.

CHENNAI: The third edition of the Federation of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry‘s (Ficci) two day Media and Entertainment Business Conclave (MEBC 2011) with the theme ‘Embracing the Digital World‘ began here today.

Opening the inaugural session with the welcome address, Ficci Secretary General Rajiv Kumar said, "Though the Indian media and entertainment (M&E) industry has demonstrated global competitiveness, but its share in the global market it is still in terms of single digits and needs to be a bigger player in the global market place."

Chalking out Ficci‘s plans for the M&E industry, Kumar that Ficci has formed the Sector Skills Council in association with the National Skills Development Council which will help make available skills which are in short supply across industries and more so the media and entertainment industry. 

Ficci plans to promote digitalisation in the future and is inclusive across all the players. He said that at present India‘s share of location shooting is just one per cent and that Ficci would address the policy makers to have a single window clearance so that more dollars can be attracted for the country.

During his theme address, MEBC chairman Kamal Hasan said he has always been a promoter of digitisation and that digitising would help monetisation for entertainment industry as well as the government.

Digitisation has the potential for monetisation across the myriad platforms available and that in the case of digital, monetization begins with the box-office. He sent a strong message to the promoters of analogue saying that this is not a chest thumping exercise; it is to understand that these people would be gently eased into the digital world.

There were special addresses by the Tamil Film Producers Council SA Chandrasekaran, The South Indian Film Chamber President C Kalyan both of whom requested big production houses such as Reliance and UTV to help the small films by buying them and promoting them. "95 per cent of the films made in the country are small budget films. There are many good small budget films that suffer at the box office because of lack of marketing resources" said Chandrasekharan.

The inaugural session culminated with the release of Ficci-Deloitte Report by Tamil Nadu Governor K Rosaiah who suggested during his inaugural address that small producers should look at co-branding and sponsorships for promoting of their films.