Mumbai, Jan. 24: Shah Rukh Khan and Sourav Ganguly versus Mukesh Ambani and Sachin Tendulkar. Coming soon to a stadium in your town.

Bollywood and business crossed swords — or should it be bats — over cricket today, stumping up some serious money to own teams that will play in the Indian Premier League.

Shah Rukh will be the Badshah of Calcutta, having paid $75.09 million (see chart). Ambani put on the table the highest, $111.9 million, for Mumbai. Anything less might have been a slight to his standing as India’s richest man.

With the successful bidders announced, the league’s eight teams now resemble football clubs not only in being able to buy foreign players but also in having celebrity owners.

Just as Ambani owns the Mumbai team — for 10 years, according to the terms — Italy’s richest man and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was the major stakeholder in top soccer club AC Milan from 1986 till 2004.

The world’s wealthiest Indian, L.N. Mittal, recently bought Queen’s Park Rangers, which plays the Championship, one division below the English Premier League.

Shah Rukh has company, too, in the world of showbiz. Singer Elton John owned the Watford Football Club that plays the Championship and is now its life president.

Immediately after winning his bid together with friend and actress Juhi Chawla and her businessman husband Jai Mehta, Shah Rukh showed he had his finger on Calcutta’s pulse. He said he would like Sourav Ganguly to lead his team.

Sourav has been named one of four “iconic” players, the others being Sachin (Mumbai), Rahul Dravid (Bangalore) and Yuvraj Singh (Mohali). IPL rules say they must play for their home teams for at least three years before they are available for bidding by rivals.

“They will command a 10 per cent higher fee than the maximum earner (among the rest) in a particular team,” an IPL official said.

He added that ODI and Twenty20 captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni would be part of the common pool of players but would be paid on a par with the iconic players.

An official said Shah Rukh’s first choice was Delhi but the GMR Group bagged the team with a $84m bid. He then chose Calcutta over Jaipur, the city of close friend and IPL chairman Lalit Modi.

League sources said the actor was probably swayed by the cricket craze in Calcutta and Eden Gardens’ huge capacity. The franchisees (owners) will get a share of the revenue through telecast rights, merchandise, ticket sales and promotional events.

“Anil Ambani made a lower bid for Calcutta. The Sahara Group, Deutsche Bank and Preity Zinta, too, bid for the city,” the official said.

Preity, together with boyfriend Ness Wadia of Bombay Dyeing, Dabur’s Mohit Burman and Apeejay Surendra Group’s Karan Paul, won Mohali for $76m. UB Group and Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya, edged by Mukesh Ambani to Mumbai, settled for Bangalore.

The owners must be ready to loosen their purse strings again next month, during the bidding for the players (each team has 16). Over 70 international cricketers have signed for the league, and Shane Warne has been quoted as the most expensive with a reserve price of £400,000 (Rs 3.1 crore).

Hyderabad went to the Deccan Chronicle group at $107.01m, Chennai to India Cements ($91m) and Jaipur to the UK-based Emerging Media ($67m). Three late bidders — the Sahara Group, Future Group and ICICI Ventures — were disqualified, Modi said.