MUMBAI: The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), which claims to represent 70 million traders and has been a strong votary of calls to boycott Chinese products, on Thursday escalated its protest over the the award of IPL 2020 title sponsor rights to Dream11 in a letter to Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju.
Reason for its opposition: Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd is a major stakeholder in the fantasy gaming platform.
CAIT had on Wednesday written to Board of Control for Cricket in India president Sourav Ganguly raising the same points. Apparently not satisfied with BCCI’s “lack of response” to its protests, the body decided directly go to the “top of the sports food chain in India”.
CAIT alleged that the BCCI has ‘hoodwinked the people of India’ and its decision to suspend VIVO’s deal for title sponsorship of IPL 2020 ‘was a mere eyewash’. CAIT said BCCI has gone ahead and awarded the title rights to Dream11, which has a Chinese investor ‘as one of its major stakeholders’.
According to CAIT such contradiction will give a wrong signal that on one hand while the government is taking important steps to liberate itself from the “vicious circle” of Chinese companies, on the other hand, BCCI is entirely dependent upon Chinese companies as after VIVO, Dream11 is the second company which has a major Chinese investment.
“As you are well aware that the BCCI had earlier this month decided to retain Chinese handset maker VIVO as the title sponsor of IPL 2020 to be held in Dubai amid strong objections raised by the CAIT and others in view of the strong anti-China sentiments prevailing in the country, the contract with Vivo was cancelled,” CAIT national secretary-general, Praveen Khandelwal wrote in the letter.
The letter further reads: “However, to our utter shock and dismay, the BCCI has once again hoodwinked the people of India and awarded the contract to online gaming company Dream11 which also has Chinese investor Tencent Global as one oits major stakeholders. This sheer insensitive behaviour of the BCCI is indicative of the fact that the earlier decision to stop Vivo was a mere eyewash and the BCCI in fact has absolutely no sympathies with the Indian soldiers and does not respect the sentiments of the Indian citizens.”
Suffice to say, there is more of the same in the long-winded letter, and speaking to BW Businessworld, Khandelwal even said: “We plan to do a nationwide strike if our demands are not met.”
Nationwide strike? SportzPower will take that statement with a barrel of salt but what is certainly awaited now is how the government responds.
The BCCI had on Wednesday confirmed the award of the IPL 2020 title sponsorship to Dream11.
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Vivo out, now opposition to Dream11 as IPL title sponsor
