MUMBAI: The Elite Football League of India (EFLI) has retained Madison Street Capital, a provider of corporate finance and mergers and acquisition (M&A) advisory services, to raise capital and explore equity finance opportunities for it.

Ten Sports will telecast later all the 31 matches that the first season for the EFLI will have. The tournament has been preponed from November to 20 July in Sri Lanka.

Eight teams will take part, five of which are from India, two from Sri Lanka and one from Pakistan. They will compete in American-style football.

Madison Street Capital senior MD of the Capital Markets Group Barry Petersen said,?We are excited to be partnering with a highly experienced management team in media/entertainment who raised the initial equity and secured the global partnerships that will produce a successful first season launch. Given the demographics and the proven success of the IPL, Ten Sports and the WWE in India, the opportunity is substantial.?

EFLI director of operations Tausif Sheikh said that the company is not selling team franchises to corporates in the first year. "We want to take it to a stage where we establish value. People should feel that it is a good time to get involved. Once it airs on Ten Sports, people will come to know what it is all about. For the first year, we focussing on doing sponsorship deals for the teams. We are doing the event in Sri Lanka partly due to the monsoons. The players are ready to play and holding the event in November would not have made sense.

The tournament will be held next year in India. "We could hold it either just before the start of the IPL or just after," said Sheikh.

EFLI has support from high-profile sports and entertainment figures such as Kurt Warner, Mark Wahlberg, Mike Ditka, Michal Irvin, Brandon Chillar, and Ron Jaworski.

Coaches and players for the current eight-team league were selected from a field of 10,000 applicants, and were trained by US-based football coaches affiliated with EFLI.

EFLI will use the same model as the IPL, which recently received $2 billion for a 10-year broadcast contract, utilising a single stadium as the venue. The broadcast team is led by Sandy Grossman, the only television executive to direct 10 NFL Super Bowls.

The EFLI was established by the Elite Football Federation of India, the first sanctioned and recognised American football federation in India. The Federation acts as a pass-through entity for EFLI, distributing 15 per cent of its revenue to the Sports Ministry of India to help maintain its ongoing programs and facilities.

MUMBAI: The cash-strapped Sri Lanka Cricket board (SLC) has set a floor price of $3 million for the T20 league franchises, a paltry amount compared to the IPL.

When IPL launched in 2008, it had fixed a minimum price of $50 million, which later zoomed to $225 million when two teams were added in 2010.

The SLC said it will lease out seven teams for a period of seven years and has set in motion the process of identifying franchises for the Sri Lanka Premier League. Bids are invited for the T20 league which has been formed on the lines of cash rich Indian Premier League.

The last day to submit bids is 25 June, while the names of successful bidders will be announced the same day. Interested entities can bid for a maximum of three franchises.

The first edition of SLPL Twenty20 will feature seven provincial teams who will play a total of 24 matches at two venues Colombo and Pallekele. The SLPL will be played from 10-31 August before the ICC Twenty20 World Cup which will be held in Sri Lanka.

Each team will be allowed to have only 18 players in their squad with a compulsory ruling of no more than six overseas players in each squad.

However, teams can field only four overseas players in the playing eleven, while the remaining seven players will be Sri Lankan?s with one player mandatorily being an under-21 cricketer.

The players will be selected through draft process with players being divided into two groups. The first group will consist of players from Sri Lanka while the second group will include foreign players.

It was the Indian cricket board?s reluctance to allow Indian players in the SLPL that led to the postponement of the league last year.

However, the SLC has made it clear that it will go ahead with the league even without Indian players. "We will go ahead with the tournament with or without Indian players," SLC Secretary Nishantha Ranatunga said.

The Sri Lankan board has got the commitment of most full member countries, who have committed to release their players for the tournament, he added.

Somerset Entertainment Ventures is commercial rights holder for the tournament.

All the matches of SLPL will be televised live by Carlton Sports in Sri Lanka. CSN is owned by family members of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

MUMBAI: The International Cricket Council (ICC) will not consider creating an official window for the Indian Premier League in its Future Tours Programme, outgoing ICC CEO Haroon Lorgat has said.

According to Lorgat, giving an official window to IPL will set a dangerous precedent and open a pandora?s box with similar demands coming from other boards like Australia?s Big Bash League and BCB?s Bangladesh Premier League.

"The consequence of that (an IPL window) is what do we do with the Big Bash League? What do we do with other premier leagues -- Sri Lanka is launching one, Bangladesh has one," he said.

"I know people might say the IPL is the premier league, but once you provide a window for one particular member, you have to be conscious of the fact you may well have to do it for other members. Hence why we have not been supportive of a window specifically for any one of those domestic leagues."

Lorgat, who was appointed as ICC CEO In April 2008, will demit office on 30 June. Former South African cricketer and ICC GM Commercial David Richardson will take over as new chief executive.

MUMBAI: Sri Lankan Cricket (SLC), the governing body of cricket in the country, has signed a fresh deal with Singapore-based Somerset Entertainment Ventures for its ambitious franchise based T20 league that had failed to take off last year.

As per the new deal, the tournament will be held between 10-31 August ahead of the ICC World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka in September, according to ESPNCricinfo.

SEV had entered into a five-year deal with SLC to acquire the commercial rights of SLPL, but the deal became void as the interim committee of SLC that had signed the deal was replaced.

The new deal also addresses concerns raised by a Committee on Public Enterprises report regarding some of the clauses in the contract. The agreement has been cleared by the office of the Sri Lankan attorney general.

The inaugural edition of the SLPL was supposed to be held from 19 July to 4 August but it did not take-off due to Indian cricket board?s reluctance to grant NoC to its players to participate in the league.

The BCCI had at that time contended that the contract with SEV does not safeguard the financial interests of the Indian players. The BCCI also suspected that former IPL chairman Lalit Modi had interests in SLPL, a charge that was vehemently denied by both SEV and SLC.

As for the format of the event, the SLPL will have seven teams who will play each other in a round-robin format followed by semi-finals and finals. The games are expected to be played at Colombo and Kandy.

MUMBAI: Sporty Solutionz, the Delhi-based sports rights management company, has signed up Geo TV and Carlton Sports as official broadcast partners for the Indian Premier League in Pakistan and Sri Lanka respectively.

Sporty Solutionz had acquired IPL broadcast sub-licensing rights for the two territories from Multi Screen Media, the official broadcast rights holder of the tournament in Indian subcontinent.

The company has earlier successfully acquired the worldwide rights to market and license the Bangladesh Premier League in the event?s opening season. It also plans to invest into various other sports properties besides cricket.