MUMBAI: The speculations are finally over. The Indian Premier League (IPL) will be an eight team affair in 2016 as the Board Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) auctioned the two new franchises, Pune and Rajkot. Sanjeev Goenka's New Rising won Pune franchisee while the Rajkot team is owned by the mobile phone manufacturer Intex.

The two interim teams will not get a slice of BCCI's franchise revenue instead Goenka's will dish out Rs 16 crore, while Intex will pay Rs 10 crore to the board as they acquired the franchises for the respective amount in the reverse bidding process.  

Pune and Rajkot will now have the option to choose from the top five players of CSK and RR. This will be decided during a players draft on 15 December 2015.

After series of controversies, rounds of introspection, intervention by the Supreme Court of India, the BCCI decided to ban the N Srinivasan owned Chennai Super Kings and Raj Kundra’s Rajasthan Royals for two years.

The decision posed a grave threat to the IPL fixture that would have otherwise been curtailed to an event with just six teams, and hence a lower number of matches. With the inclusion of the two new teams the tourney is back to eight teams. So the official broadcaster Multi Screen Media will have the same time span to monetise the cash rich league. 

The rights acquisition cost were sold at $1 billion for a period of ten years to Multi Screen Media (MSM) which will conclude after 2017 edition.