News 24 bureau
New Delhi: Sakshi Rawat nee Dhoni, wife of MS Dhoni, has brought huge luck (Laxmi) just couple of days after her marriage with Indian Cricket team Captain. Captain cool, who is currently in Sri Lanka to lead Indian side, got a wedding gift worth whopping Rs 200 crore in an endorsement and talent management deal.
According to sources,Dhoni secured a three-year deal with sports and talent management firms Rhiti Sports Management and Mindscapes One. These compnaies will manage Dhoni’s long list of endorsements and brand associations, corporate profile, patents and digital rights, images, visibility on social networking sites and merchandise.
This amount is even bigger than that what Tendulkar got in the year 2006. That deal was worth Rs 180-crore for three years.
Dhoni ended a long-running deal with sports management firm Gameplan Sports two years ago. Last year, he formally joined Mindscapes Maestros along with three promoters. But internal differences cropped up between the owners, resulting in one quitting the company. At the time Mindscapes was floated, there was intense speculation that Dhoni had come on board as an advisor.
Rhiti Sports is headed by Arun Pandey, a confidant and business associate of Dhoni, while Mindscapes One is owned by Pratik Sen, who has been managing the cricketer’s endorsements for more than a year.
Rhiti Sports also manage Dhoni's great pals, RP Singh and Harbhajan Singh. It is said that Dhoni charges up to Rs 6 crore an endorsement a year and is associated with 22 brands such as PepsiCo, Reebok, Aircel, Godrej and Hersheys.
With the World Cup due to be held in the Indian subcontinent next year and several international series coming up, a rash of companies are learnt to be keen to rope in Dhoni. Dhoni earned $10 million last year, which made him top a list of the world’s highest-grossing cricketers, said a Forbes magazine report. He earned $8 million from endorsements, said the report, adding that his campaigns were 45% more expensive than other players.