The auction of the eight newly created regional cricket teams that will compete in the Indian Premier League (IPL) today raised $720 million (£365 million) as Bollywood stars vied with billionaire businessmen for ownership of some of the most desirable trophy assets in South Asia.

Mukesh Ambani, the mogul behind the Reliance Industries who is India's richest man, won the most expensive franchise, for Bombay, the country's commercial capital, bidding $111.9 million.

Vijay Mallya, the beer and airlines billionaire, tabled $111.6 million to win Bangalore, the centre of India's IT industry.

The auction, held amid mounting concerns over how India will fare as the global economy hits a downturn, confirms the money-spinning prowess of cricket in the subcontinent.

Last week a consortium of India's Sony Television network and the Singapore-based World Sports Group agreed to pay $1 billion for the media rights for the new Twenty20 competition over ten years.

The IPL, whose organisers have promised to pitch the world's elite players against each other, will begin its inaugural season in April. Some 59 matches will be played over 44 days.

Shah Rukh Khan, the Bollywood actor, acquired the cheapest team, Calcutta, a snip at $75 million. Among the more prosaic corporate bidders, India Cements won Madras, for $91 million.

The victors have paid for the rights to plaster their marketing messages on a cadre of cricketing heroes, with the likes of Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath signed up and the participation of the entire World Cup winning Indian team apparently agreed.

Mr Mallya, the chairman of UB Group, which brews Kingfisher beer, immediately declared that his company would use its new asset as an "active promotional platform across all our brands".

However, with players' schedules and issues of international availability set to throw a volley of spanners in the new league's works, the work of the IPL's main backer — the famously opaque Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) — only now enters its toughest phase.

The new venture also faces competition from the rebel Indian Cricket League, which has hired Kapil Dev, the paceman that Wisden named its Indian Cricketer of the Century in 2002, to act as its calling card.

Recalling the efforts of Kerry Packer in the 1970s to reinvent the game through his ambitious World Series Cricket, the ICL is aiming to blend India's underpaid domestic talent with some of the most famous — albeit in many cases retired — names in the global game.

Times Recommends

• Gazprom brands Ukraine 'a barbarian' in gas row
• Services sector raises fears over UK jobless
• Retailers surge as profits survive sales plunge