The moment that planted the seed for Kolkata Knight Riders happened not in Kolkata, not in a boardroom, but in Jaipur, when Lalit Modi watched a cricket crowd go completely berserk the moment Shah Rukh Khan walked in.
In a conversation with Humans of Bombay, the former IPL chairman and BCCI vice-president recalled the origin story of one of the league’s most beloved franchises, and how a reluctant, football-loving Bollywood star was persuaded to buy a cricket team he didn’t fully understand, using money he didn’t entirely have.
The Jaipur moment
“I took Shah Rukh to a game in Rajasthan when I was BCCI vice-president. It was the first international match ever played in Jaipur. This was before the IPL; I think about a year earlier. I saw the crowds go absolutely hysterical when he arrived. He became the highlight of the match.”
That reaction confirmed what Modi had already been thinking, that combining cricket and Bollywood was the key to building a franchise league that could compete with prime-time Indian television.
The business logic behind IPL
Modi had already cornered the traditional cricket advertising market through the BCCI. The new challenge was different; the IPL needed to go head-to-head with the biggest shows on Indian television for the 8 pm slot.
“In India, two things sell, cricket and Bollywood. I had already brought in the money associated with the cricketing world and advertisers for BCCI. The rest of television advertising was going into the saas-bahu world and programming centred around Bollywood.”
The prime-time gamble was significant. “To make the IPL successful, I needed that 8 pm time slot. I was going head-to-head with some of the biggest television shows in the country. Cricket had never really been a nighttime product. Even T20 World Cup was also a daytime product. I was taking a huge risk by creating a prime-time night event.”
Celebrity franchise owners, he reasoned, would pull in audiences who weren’t there for the cricket alone. Shah Rukh Khan was the obvious first call.
The reluctant team owner
There was just one problem. Shah Rukh Khan was not a cricket fan.
“Who better than Shah Rukh Khan to own a team? The funny thing was that Shah Rukh didn’t like cricket and didn’t really understand cricket. He is a football fan. When I told him I wanted him to buy a team, he was apprehensive. He said, ‘I don’t understand cricket.’ I told him to leave that to me and that I would ensure the right team and system were put in place.”
The next concern was financial. “He asked me, ‘If I happen to win a team, how much is it going to cost?’ I told him the down payment would be Rs 20 crore. He replied, ‘But that’s a big part of my savings account.'”
How Nokia made it work
Modi’s solution was as elegant as it was opportunistic. Nokia, at the time one of the world’s dominant mobile handset brands, was desperate to sign Shah Rukh as a brand ambassador, but the actor wasn’t interested.
“I couldn’t interfere in his endorsement business. So I asked Nokia, if Shah Rukh were to win a team, would they sponsor the front of the jersey? I told them I could guarantee Shah Rukh would wear their shirts and caps, and asked if they would pay a $5 million advance. They said yes.”
The arrangement made everyone a winner. “It was a win-win for Nokia if Shah Rukh owned a team. It was a win-win for Shah Rukh if Nokia became the front-shirt sponsor. He basically bought it for free.”
And it all happened in a single day. “Shah Rukh put in the money and Nokia backed it up. At 12 o’clock, Shah Rukh wrote a cheque. By the evening, Nokia wrote another cheque to sponsor the KKR consortium. That fell into place very well.”
KKR, co-owned by Shah Rukh Khan alongside actress Juhi Chawla and businessman Jay Mehta, went on to become one of the IPL’s most recognisable and commercially successful franchises, a multi-title winner and one of the league’s most valuable teams. Not bad for a football fan who didn’t understand cricket.
