Indian Premier League (IPL)
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a professional cricket league founded in 2008, featuring teams from various major Indian cities competing in a fast-paced format known as Twenty20 (T20) cricket. This version of cricket emphasizes quick, high-scoring matches, typically lasting about three hours, contrasting with the longer traditional formats of the sport. The IPL quickly became the most successful professional cricket league globally, despite facing controversies such as a betting scandal in 2013.
Originating from a successful T20 World Cup win by India in 2007, the league was established to capitalize on the format's popularity. It features a franchise model, with corporate entities and celebrities bidding for team ownership, leading to fierce competition among players and franchises. The league has attracted top talent, with salaries for star players often exceeding one million dollars.
Since its inception, the IPL has grown significantly, setting records for attendance, viewership, and sponsorship, including a notable $6.4 billion deal in 2022. The league has evolved to include ten teams as of 2022, and its format and financial success position it among the most valued sports leagues worldwide, just behind the NFL in the United States. As a result, the IPL continues to play a significant role in the global cricket landscape.
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Indian Premier League (IPL)
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a professional cricket league established in 2008 with teams playing in several major Indian cities. The IPL plays a style of cricket known as Twenty20 (T20), a modified version of the traditional sport designed to move at a faster pace and generate more scoring. Despite dealing with several controversies, including a 2013 betting scandal, the IPL has grown since its inception to become the most successful professional cricket league in the world. Its top players routinely earn salaries of more than $1 million. In 2022, the league's sponsorship rights were sold for more than $6.4 billion. In 2024, the Tata Group extended its title sponsorship for five years for approximately $301 million.
Background
The roots of the sport of cricket are unknown but are believed to go back to medieval England, where they possibly originated from a simple game played with a ball and stick in rural areas. The first definitive mention of cricket as a sport was made in records dating from the late sixteenth century. By the early eighteenth century, matches were common across England, and the first rules of the game were formalized in 1744. Cricket grew in popularity to become a national sport of England, and it was soon exported to British colonies around the world. While its popularity in England has fallen off in the twenty-first century, cricket has acquired a strong following in the British Commonwealth of Nations, most notably Australia, South Africa, the West Indies, and India.
The basic rules of cricket involve two teams with eleven players on each side. One side bats while the other takes the field. The batting team sends two batsmen to the field, one carrying a flat-edged bat to defend a wicket—a set of three sticks and crosspieces set into the ground—and the other is stationed at another wicket 66 feet (20.1 meters) away. A player on the opposing team throws the ball in an attempt to break the wicket. This player, called the bowler, throws six balls at one wicket, completing an over. After one over is complete, another bowler takes a turn throwing the ball. Runs are scored if the batter hits the ball and the two batsmen run to a line by the opposite wicket, or if the ball reaches or goes beyond the field boundary in the air. A batter can be declared out in several ways, including the bowler breaking the striking batter's wicket with a throw, a fielder catching a batted ball, or a fielder breaking the wicket before a batsman can reach the opposite line. One side bats until ten batsmen have been declared out, and then the teams switch roles.
Cricket can be divided into three basic types of matches. Test cricket has no limits to the number of overs that can be bowled, and the sides can each have two turns at bat. Test matches last for six hours a day and can take up to five days to complete. One-day cricket limits the amount of overs to fifty, and each side is allowed one turn to bat. T20 cricket limits the overs to twenty and one at-bat per side. A side's turn at bat is complete after ten batsmen are out or twenty overs have been bowled. Since the batting time is limited, T20 cricket is designed to encourage batsmen to take more chances in attempting to score runs. T20 matches usually last about three hours.
Overview
T20 cricket was first introduced in Great Britain in 2003, and it soon spread to the major cricket-playing nations across the globe. The style became especially popular in India, and it was further bolstered in 2007 when the nation won the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup. In an effort to capitalize on the attention, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the sport's national governing body, established the Indian Premier League in 2008. Corporate entities, business owners, and Indian film industry stars bid a total of more than $720 million for the rights to own one of eight franchises. The inaugural franchises were based in eight major Indian cities—Bangalore, Mohali, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, and Jaipur.
Players were also selected by auction, with the Chennai Super Kings spending a then unheard of $1.5 million to acquire superstar Mahendra Dhoni. Play was modeled on the format used by English soccer's Premier League, a double round-robin tournament in which each team plays each other twice. After league play was completed, the top four teams advanced to the playoffs. The IPL's first season consisted of fifty-nine matches over forty-four days and ended with the Rajasthan Royals from Jaipur as champions.
The inaugural season captured the nation's attention with its entertaining style, and the IPL's attendance and television ratings soared. Two new franchises—the Kochi Tuskers Kerala and the Pune Warriors India—joined the league for the 2011 season, though the Kochi team was disbanded a year later for breach of contract. The Pune Warriors folded in 2013. After the 2012 season, the Sunrisers Hyderabad replaced the Hyderabad Deccan Chargers.
In May 2013, three players with the Rajasthan Royals were arrested and charged with accepting money from gamblers to influence certain aspects of matches but not the final results—a practice known as spot-fixing. Further investigation into the incident revealed a high-ranking official with the Chennai Super Kings had shared information with gamblers and attempted to influence matches. One of the co-owners of the Rajasthan Royals was also accused of unethical activity. Because of the scandal, the IPL suspended the Super Kings and Royals for the 2016 and 2017 seasons. The Gujarat Lions and the Rising Pune Supergiant replaced the franchises, which were not allowed to return until 2018.
Despite the controversy, the IPL maintained its popularity, outpacing similar professional cricket leagues in Australia and England in television viewership, attendance, and revenue. By 2017, the IPL's total value was estimated at more than $4 billion, and the league had signed a five-year $341 million sponsorship deal with Chinese smartphone manufacturer Vivo. The amount was a 454 percent increase over the previous sponsorship agreement. The success of the IPL allowed it to attract some of the best cricket players in the world, with its biggest stars earning millions of dollars. In 2015, Yuvraj Singh signed the largest contract in IPL history, a $2.67 million deal with the Delhi Daredevils. In 2017, eighteen players had contracts of more than $1 million. By 2021, that number had increased to thirty-one players with contracts above $1 million. The highest paid player in 2021 was Virat Kohli, who earned $2.6 million for the Royal Challengers Bangalore.
The IPL's total value continued to rise during the 2020s. In 2022, the league signed a five-year $6.4 billion sponsorship deal. For the first time, the media rights were sold to multiple broadcasters, with Disney Star winning the television rights and Viacom18 winning the digital rights. The numbers made the IPL one of the most valued sports in the world, placing the league behind only the American National Football League (NFL) in terms of total worth. In 2022, two new franchises joined the league—the Lucknow Super Giants and the Gujarat Titans—following a heated bidding war among entities vying for the teams and bringing the total number of teams in the league to ten. The league expanded the number of matches played during this period as well. The 2024 league season was seventy-four matches, and analysts speculated that number could increase to ninety-four matches by 2027.
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