Team India jersey’s sponsor to change from Oppo to Byju’s

The Indian team has been one of the most popular sporting teams in India. Hence, over the years, the bid for India’s sponsor on the jersey has been pretty heated. Sahara was one of the main sponsors for a long time before being replaced by Star. In 2017, Oppo was introduced as Team India’s jersey sponsors. Now, Byju’s is all set to replace Oppo on India’s shirts. It will be in effect from September later this year.

The Chinese mobile maker, Oppo had made a whopping winning bid of Rs 1079 crores pipping their Vivo counterparts by over 400 crores. However, according to a report in Times of India, it is learnt that Oppo has decided to take a back seat and exit due to the ‘extremely high’ and ‘unsustainable’ value.

Oppo was paying the BCCI about Rs 4.61 crore per bilateral match and Rs 1.56 crore for an ICC event match or an Asia Cup game. Star used to pay about Rs 1.92 crores per bilateral match and Rs 61 lakh for an ICC or an Asia Cup match. Thus, now with Byju’s replacing the Chinese mobile brand, they will continue to pay the BCCI the same amount as Oppo. The contract is active till 2022 after which new bidding will take place.

‘Just the right kind of player to enter this space’

“Basically, what Oppo has done is cut its losses. They’ve reassigned the rights to Byju’s. They will pay Byju’s a minor amount to help make the full payment while Byju’s will pay BCCI. The board will continue to get what is due to it,” sources revealed to TOI.

Byju Ravindran who is Byju’s founder admitted that this is exactly the kind of player they were looking for to enter this space. “They’ve been looking for branding exercises of this volume. It’s (Team India jersey rights) just the kind of space they wanted to get into. At the moment they fit absolutely well here,” the industry sources added.

India are scheduled to travel to the Caribbean for three T20Is, three ODIs and two Test matches. On that tour, they will be sporting Oppo’s logo as the sponsor on their jersey. However, Byju’s will replace that from September, when India start their home season.