Adar Poonawalla, a billionaire pharma tycoon, on Thursday confirmed that he would officially place a “strong” bid to acquire the 2025 Indian Premier League (IPL) champions, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). It is worth mentioning that Diageo, the parent company of United Spirits Ltd.,had put RCB on sale, and this development came months after the franchise ended its IPL title drought by winning the 2025 edition of the tournament.
For months now, it has been speculated that the CEO of Serum Institute of India and Chairman of Poonawalla Fincorp is interested in buying one of the most popular teams across the world.
On Thursday, Poonawalla confirmed the development, saying he would place a bid in the coming months to acquire one of the strongest teams in the IPL.
“Over the next few months, will be putting in a STRONG and COMPETITIVE bid for @RCBTweets, one of the best teams in the IPL,” Poonawalla wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Earlier, Poonawalla had hinted at possibly buying RCB, posting on social media that RCB is a great team at the right price.
Speaking of RCB, the franchise was originally bought in 2008 by Vijay Mallya’s UB Group for about USD 111.6 million. Years later, Diageo, the London-listed spirits giant, built a controlling stake in United Spirits, becoming the majority shareholder by 2014. This is how RCB came under Diageo’s effective control.
If any sale of RCB is to take place now, then it would have to be handled through United Spirits’ and Diageo’s corporate channels.
RCB won the IPL 2025 edition
RCB and Virat Kohli’s agonising wait for the maiden IPL title came to an end in June 2025 after the franchise defeated Shreyas Iyer’s Punjab Kings in the summit clash at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. However, this victory was marred by sad scenes the next day as 11 people lost their lives in a stampede outside the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru during the team’s victory celebrations.
Owing to this incident, the future of RCB’s matches in Bengaluru hangs in the balance. The Karnataka government have given the nod to host the matches at the venue but RCB are yet to confirm the same.
“We welcome Karnataka Government’s decision to allow matches to be held in the iconic M Chinnaswamy Stadium and we also recognise and highly appreciate KSCA’s efforts in the ongoing infrastructure work that has led to this conditional approval to host matches,” the RCB said in a statement on Wednesday.
“”We have repeatedly stated that fans are the heart and soul of RCB, we have always had a fans-first approach, and we want to work together to ensure they have the best and safe experience. From our preliminary conversations, there are still a few grey areas that need to be looked into, and we are considering these parameters and inputs from all stakeholders before arriving at a responsible decision for the team and our fans,” the statement added.