Indian Badminton League player auction on Monday

In quite an innovative way of promoting the sport, the Indian Badminton League (IBL) – a tournament over 2 weeks with 6 teams involved – will see its first live auction for players on Monday. Each of the 6 franchise teams will have the opportunity to “buy” players for the event and some of the world’s biggest stars are in line to get picked on Monday when the auction is set. Saina Nehwal and Lee Chong Wei will probably lead the bids but quite a lot of other players have been allocated a minimum bid of US$50,000 together with these two big names.  Apart from Bao Chunlai and Zheng Bo, none of the Chinese top shuttlers will play this league as most will be preparing for their National Games.

Here are the starting bids for some of the players involved in the IBL in August (all amounts in U.S. dollars):

Lee Chong Wei US$50,000
Saina Nehwal 50,000
Juliane Schenk 50,000
Ratchanok Intanon 50,000
Mathias Boe 50,000
Carsten Mogensen 50,000
Boonsak Ponsana 50,000
Zheng Bo 40,000
Bao Chunlai 40,000
Joachim Fischer 35,000
Christinna Pedersen 35,000
Taufik Hidayat 15,000

Official website here