IPL PLAYERS HIGHLY UNDERPAID

The league’s media rights may have skyrocketed since its inception but salary cap hasn’t grown proportionately. Swaroop Swaminathan captures the story through numbers

EARLIER this year, a Jefferies Note research had revealed that the Indian Premier League (IPL), one of the flagship properties of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), was now duking it out with the big boys in terms of values. Purely on a permatch basis, Jefferies had estimated that each and every IPL game was worth north $15.5mn; putting it in second place behind the National Football League (NFL) in the US but well clear of the likes of the Premier League in the UK and the likes of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Major League Baseball (MLB).

It kind of confirmed the rapid overall media rights deal the IPL had enjoyed since 2008, the inaugural edition of the league. To give a sense of perspective, for the first 10 years, the league’s media rights had, on average, sold for just over ? 8000 cr for a 10-year cycle. The latest media rights deal was worth ₹48,390 cr for five years. A manifold growth.

However, that’s just one part of the story. While the league has enjoyed outstanding growth from a media rights point of view, an under-rated success story because the league began at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008 and continued to grow even during a pandemic, the same cannot be held for player salaries.