Indian Premier League (IPL), Indian professional Twenty20 (T20) cricket league that was established in 2008 and has developed into one of the richest sports leagues in the world. The brainchild of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the Indian Premier League (IPL) is based on a round-robin group and knockout format and has teams in major Indian cities.
Matches generally begin in late afternoon or evening so at least a portion of them are played under floodlights at night to maximize the television audience for worldwide broadcasts. Initially, league matches were played on a home-and-away basis between all teams, but, with the planned expansion to 10 clubs (divided into two groups of five) in 2011, that format changed so that matches between some teams would be limited to a single encounter. The top four teams contest three playoff matches, with one losing team being given a second chance to reach the final, a wrinkle aimed at maximizing potential television revenue. The playoff portion of the tournament involves the four teams that finished at the top of the tables in a series of knockout games that allow one team that lost its first-round game a second chance to advance to the final match.
With the advent of the IPL, almost overnight the world’s best cricketers—who had seldom made the kind of money earned by their counterparts in other professional sports—became millionaires. The owners of the IPL franchises—including major companies, Bollywood film stars, and media moguls—bid for the best players in auctions organized by the league. At the outset of the IPL, the well-financed Mumbai Indians had the league’s biggest payroll, more than $100 million. It cost the Chennai Super Kings $1.5 million to secure the services of Mahendra Dhoni in the initial auction for the 2008 season and the Kolkata Knight Riders $2.4 million to sign Gautam Gambhir, the opening batsman for the Indian national team, in the bidding for the 2011 season. Yuvraj Singh (2014 and 2015), Ben Stokes (2017 and 2018), Pat Cummins (2020), Chris Morris (2021), Sam Curran (2023), and Mitchell Starc (2024) are some other players who have been secured at the highest bids.
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The eight founding franchises were the Mumbai Indians, the Chennai Super Kings, the Royal Challengers Bangalore, the Deccan Chargers (based in Hyderabad), the Delhi Daredevils (renamed to Delhi Capitals), the Punjab XI Kings (renamed to Punjab Kings) (Mohali), the Kolkata Knight Riders, and the Rajasthan Royals (Jaipur). In late 2010 two franchises, Rajasthan and Punjab, were expelled from the league by the BCCI for breaches of ownership policy, but they were later reinstated in time for the 2011 tournament. Two new franchises, the Pune Warriors India and the Kochi Tuskers Kerala, joined the IPL for the 2011 tournament. The Kochi club played just one year before the BCCI terminated its contract. In 2013 the Deccan Chargers were replaced in the IPL by the Sunrisers Hyderabad. The Gujarat Titans and the Lucknow Super Giants debuted in 2022.
IPL’s growth story
The first IPL tournament, held over 44 days in 2008, was won by the Rajasthan Royals, one of the smaller-market franchises, captained by Shane Warne, the great Australian bowler. The IPL has come a long way since its first season. According to a Forbes report in 2022, the average value of the IPL franchises shows an annualized growth rate of 24 percent, up from $67 million in 2009 (of 8 teams) to $1.04 billion in 2022 (of 10 teams). This growth in average team value, when compared with the past 13 years’ growth rate of 10 percent for National Football League (NFL) team values and 16 percent for National Basketball Association team values, is remarkable. Expectations about the 2023–27 media contract contributed to the team value in 2022. For the five-year cycle starting in 2023, streaming and TV rights were sold for a record total of $6 billion to Viacom18 and Star India (owned by Disney). This is more than double the amount at which media rights were sold for the previous cycle. Such has been the IPL’s success that the BCCI announced a new league for women’s cricket, the Women’s Premier League (WPL), which played its inaugural season in March 2023. In the wake of the IPL’s success, other cricketing countries scrambled to grab some of the riches by forming their own domestic T20 leagues. Major League Cricket (MLC), a U.S. T20 cricket league launched in 2023, also has its IPL connections: four of its six franchises have investments from IPL franchise owners, and many IPL cricketers feature in MLC.