LAHORE, Pakistan — The Pakistan Cricket Board will operate the Multan Sultans in PSL 2026 after the franchise’s ownership deal with Ali Khan Tareen’s group ended without a renewal ahead of the league’s 11th season. Chairman Mohsin Naqvi said procurement rules and the league calendar left no time to complete a sale before the tournament, so the board will run the team for one season and auction it later, Jan. 3, 2026.
The decision caps a dispute that turned increasingly public in late 2025, with Tareen criticizing league governance and the PCB responding with legal notices. In comments reported by Dawn, Naqvi said, “This year, the PCB will operate Multan Sultans itself,” and added that an acting head would be appointed soon as the board leans on former players and professional administrators to keep cricket operations and commercial work moving ahead of PSL 2026.
Multan Sultans and the Jan. 8 PSL 2026 auction
The takeover comes as the PSL expands from six teams to eight. The PCB said its bid committee has qualified 10 bidders and scheduled a public auction for two new franchises at Islamabad’s Jinnah Convention Centre, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, according to a PCB press release on the technical evaluation. Successful bidders will have the right to choose their franchise team names from an approved list of cities: Rawalpindi, Hyderabad, Faisalabad, Gilgit, Muzaffarabad and Sialkot.
Naqvi has said the Multan Sultans could not be sold alongside the two expansion teams because any sale would require advance advertising and a waiting period under procurement rules. The PCB’s plan — detailed by ESPN’s report on the PCB takeover — is to run the Multan Sultans through PSL 2026 and then auction the franchise after the season, a move the outlet noted would be unprecedented in PSL history.
The Jan. 8 auction is also pulling the Tareen family back into PSL boardrooms. Geo News reported that the Tareen Group is among the confirmed bidders for the new franchises, positioning Tareen to re-enter the league even as the Multan Sultans move into a one-year, PCB-run holding pattern.
One immediate change is control of the brand itself. The Express Tribune reported that the former owners have lost access to the Multan Sultans’ official social media accounts and website as rights reverted to the PCB, shifting leverage in sponsor negotiations and fan engagement at a sensitive point in the season-planning cycle.
A familiar reset for Multan Sultans
This is not the first time the Multan Sultans have reverted to board control. The franchise entered the PSL as a record buy after Dubai-based Schon Group secured an eight-year deal valued at $41.6 million, as reported by Dawn in 2017.
In 2018, the PCB said it terminated Schon’s franchise agreement after the former franchisee failed to meet its financial obligations, with all rights returning to the board, according to the PCB’s joint press release.
Later that year, an Ali Tareen-led consortium won the repackaged franchise rights in a fresh bidding process, Dawn reported in 2018, launching a run that included the Multan Sultans’ PSL title in 2021 and multiple finals appearances.
With PSL 2026 expected to begin in late March, the PCB now has a compressed timeline to show that a PCB-run Multan Sultans can be managed professionally — and that a permanent sale after the season can be conducted transparently — while the league’s expansion auction, Jan. 8, tests investor appetite and reshapes the PSL’s ownership map.
