The Pakistan Super League (PSL) added two new teams to the event on Thursday, which had previously only six teams. The winning bids of a real estate consortium and a US-based aviation and healthcare conglomerate for two new Twenty20 franchises in the PSL were set at $12.75 million (approximately INR 114 crore) on Thursday. OZ Developers named Sialkot as its new franchise, which was won at the auction for Rs 1.85 billion ($6.55 million/INR 58.38 crore). FKS Group from the US picked Hyderabad after winning the bid for Rs 1.75 billion ($6.2 million/INR 55.57 crore).
When the Hyderabad team was sold at nearly the same price as the combined IPL salary of Shreyas Iyer (Rs 26.75 crore) and Rishabh Pant (Rs 27 crore), it was indeed a remarkable case. Their salaries combined amount to Rs 53.75 crore, whereas Hyderabad was sold for Rs 55.57 crore.
Moreover, the price tag of the two new PSL teams in total is still less than the total (Rs 118 crore) of the top nine players sold in the IPL 2026 auction.
The new teams will make PSL a total of eight when the season kicks off on March 26.
Multan Sultans are to be under the Pakistan Cricket Board’s management this year, and after the PSL they will be up for sale in April. The former owner of Multan, Ali Tareen, who had a falling out with the PSL management, was supposed to be one of the new team bidders but at the last moment he stepped down from the list of 10 approved bidders at Thursday’s auction.
Tareen before the auction said on X: “If I return to PSL, it has to be for the same reason. My heart lies in South Punjab. That is where I belong. When the sale of the Multan team occurs, we will be there ready. Best of luck to all the bidders.”