Pakistani-American in $500 million NFL Deal

What is NFL? It is America's National Football League, the biggest sports franchise business in the world. It's much bigger the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket franchise which is much better known to South Asians. The IPL has particularly been in the news lately for its controversial exclusion of Pakistani cricket players. Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan, who criticized Pakistanis' exclusion from IPL, has come under attack by right-wing Hindu extremists who are rampaging through the streets in India, burning theaters screening Khan's latest movie.

Today's media reports indicate that a Pakistani-American Shahid Khan of Illinois is in $450-$750 million deal to buy the NFL team St. Louis Rams. The final price will depend on whether Khan gets 60% or 100% of the stake in the NFL franchise. Khan, 55, is the president of Flex-N-Gate Corp., an auto-parts manufacturer in Urbana, Illinois with $2 billion in annual revenue. He has lived in the Champaign-Urbana area for more than 40 years and is married with two adult children. Khan is a graduate of the School of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois.

Flex-N-Gate employs over 9,500 people at 48 manufacturing and 9 product development and engineering facilities throughout Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina, and Spain. Khan, 55, and his wife, Ann Khan, live in Champaign. He has given millions of dollars to his alma mater, including funding a 2007 major expansion of the university’s tennis facilities — now called the Shahid and Ann Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex.

To put this deal in perspective for South Asian readers, "Mumbai Indians", the most expensive of the eight IPL franchises, was bought by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani for $112 million.

This season, each of the 32 NFL team owners were limited to $127m in salaries for their entire squad of players. That means some footballers are handsomely paid - Drew Brees, the star quarterback of the recent Superbowl winner the New Orleans Saints, has a six years $60m contract. By contrast, the most expensive IPL players fetch less than a million dollar bids, which are still the highest in the world for cricket players.

Indian cricket has taken a page from the big sports franchises in the West. Forbes magazine reports that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), a nonprofit body controlling the game in the country, has racked up $1 billion to date from selling commercial rights to Indian cricket for the next five years. (One source: Nike paid $45 million to flash its logo on players' apparel and to sell garments to cricket fans.) "It's all about extracting the most value," said Lalit Modi, BCCI's new marketing chief, who hopes to eventually make $1.5 billion from Indian cricket, ten times what BCCI made in the last go-around.

In both IPL and NFL, the biggest source of revenue is the sale of television rights, followed by brand name merchandise sales, ticket sales and endorsement deals.

Shahid Khan is obviously an outstanding success story for Pakistani-Americans. Nationwide, Pakistani-Americans appear to be prospering. The US census calculated that mean household income in the United States in 2002 was $57,852 annually, while that for Asian households, which includes Pakistanis, was $70,047.

Hard numbers on how many people of Pakistani descent live in the United States do not exist, but a book published by Harvard University Press on charitable donations among Pakistani-Americans, “Portrait of a Giving Community by Professor Adil Najam,” puts the number around 500,000, with some 35 percent or more of them in the New York metropolitan area. Chicago has fewer than 100,000, while other significant clusters exist in California, Texas and Washington, D.C.

New York Times estimate of 109,000 Pakistani-born American workers' occupations include salesmen, managers or administrators, drivers, doctors and accountants as the top five categories.

Pakistani-Americans political participation remains woefully inadequate. But there are some signs that it is beginning to happen at various levels starting from from local communities to state legislatures.


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Cutting Sports Ties: Lose-Lose Proposition in South Asia

India's decision to cancel Pakistan's cricket tour followed by Pakistan's decision to ban its cricketers' participation in Indian Premier League (IPL) are very disappointing to the cricket lovers around the world. Clearly, the emotions are still running high in the wake of Mumbai terrorist attacks for which India blames Pakistan. Pakistan denies its involvement.

Pakistani players were a major draw in the first IPL tournament with all-rounder Sohail Tanvir guiding his Rajasthan Royals to the title and winning the best bowler award. IPL is keenly followed in Pakistan and many Indian players such as Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Irfan Pathan and Mahinder Dhoni are revered by Pakistani sports fans.

Around a dozen Pakistani cricketers are signed up with different franchises in the IPL while five others, including leg-spinner Danish Kaneria, were entered in a players auction to be held in Goa on Thursday. IPL's Lalit Modi has confirmed that no Pakistani players will participate in the Goa auction. As to the impact on the various IPL teams, Jaipur will certainly miss the services of paceman Sohail Tanvir — the highest wicket-taker in last year's IPL with 21 scalps — and keeper-batsman Kamran Akmal. The defending champions have already lost Australia's Shane Watson to injury. Kolkata Knight Riders too, will miss paceman Umar Gul.

ICL (Indian Cricket League), IPL's competition, is also the subject of ongoing controversy in Pakistan. Pakistan's cricket board has banned players who play in ICL from participating in domestic cricket. But the latest reports indicate that the Sind High Court has temporarily lifted this ban. Effectively, the order means the group of 19 cricketers in the league can - and some will - take part in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, the domestic first-class competition. The ban on their participation in international cricket, however, remains since it is not yet a point of argument in the legal proceedings.

The India-Pakistan cricket boycott is now spreading to other sports as well. Pakistani sports ministry has now refused permission to the national hockey and squash teams to travel to India for international events.

Sporting heroes and events in South Asia put a friendly face on the perceived enemies and allow us to see each other as competitive human beings and friendly rivals rather than merely hateful adversaries out to literally destroy each other. Cricketing ties allow both cricket-crazy nations to take out their aggression against each other in a friendly superbowl of cricket, rather than a nuclear battlefield.

These sports bans of various kinds are misguided. Not only are such actions detrimental to sports, they are downright dangerous for the future of peaceful coexistence between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors.

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International cricket megastars with large paychecks to match their egos, Bollywood's elite actors, big business magnates, provocatively dressed cheerleaders, the big sports media, huge worldwide audience, deep pocket sponsors all come together to put on spectacular three hour, 2020 games of the two newly formed Indian cricketing leagues.

This is a revolution in the world of cricket, a sleepy, colonial era, gentleman's game that the British brought to their colonies including India and Pakistan. Taking a leaf from the sports leagues in US and Europe, it represents a coming of age for the business of sports in India. According to the New York Times, the Indian billionaires are for the first time staking their prestige on sports teams. The Indian Premier League’s most expensive franchise, at nearly $111.9 million, is the Mumbai Indians, fittingly owned by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. The flamboyant liquor baron Vijay Mallya picked up the Bangalore-based Royal Challengers for $111.6 million, and the actor Shah Rukh Khan is backing the Kolkata Knight Riders for $75.09 million.



Forbes magazine reports that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), a nonprofit body controlling the game in the country, has racked up $1 billion to date from selling commercial rights to Indian cricket for the next five years. (One source: Nike paid $45 million to flash its logo on players' apparel and to sell garments to cricket fans.) "It's all about extracting the most value," said Lalit Modi, BCCI's new marketing chief, who hopes to eventually make $1.5 billion from Indian cricket, ten times what BCCI made in the last go-around.

IPL offered contracts to several Pakistani players including Shoaib Malik, Shoaib Akhtar, Muhammad Asif, Shahid Afridi, Younis Khan, Muhammad Yousaf and Inzamam ul Haq.

According to the BBC, the players were offered to the franchisees in an auction process. Australia captain Ponting is among 13 of his compatriots in a pool of international cricketers available to the franchises, which were allowed to spend a maximum of $5m on eight contracted players. There have been recent reports that several top Australian players have been promised the IPL's salary cap will be axed in the future. The biggest stars could then expect IPL contracts of about $15 million. Australian captain Ricky Ponting has opposed this move. "I have certainly heard there may be no salary cap next year but I'm not sure if that will be good for the IPL," Ponting told Australia's Courier Mail. "The more I've thought about it, it might be detrimental to the whole set-up.

The winning bids, which were selected electronically in a sealed room, offered Pakistani players as follows: Shoaib Akhtar $425,000, Younis Khan $225,000, Kamran Akmal $150,000 and Umar Gul $150,000. These amounts are several times larger than the current compensation they receive from PCB.

According to BBC Sports, IPL's top 10 winning auction bids in February were:

Mahendra Dhoni: $1.5m (Chennai)
Andrew Symonds: $1.35m (Hyderabad)
Sanath Jayasuriya: $975,000 (Mumbai)
Ishant Sharma: $950,000 (Kolkata)
Irfan Pathan: $925,000 (Mohali)
Brett Lee : $900,000 (Mohali)
Jacques Kallis: $900,000 (Bangalore)
RP Singh: $875,000 (Hyderabad)
Harbhajan Singh: $850,000 (Mumbai)
Chris Gayle: $800,000 (Kolkata)