The IPL pie

The auction of cricketers for the Indian Premier League (IPL) is one more step in what is a very interesting development for international cricket. Most well-known  players have gone for figures far beyond their base prices, with Indian One-Day and Twenty20 captain MS Dhoni being sold to Chennai for a very generous $1.5 million a year, which translates to about Rs6 crore. The next most sought after player was Australia’s Andrew Symonds, bought by Hyderabad for $1.35 million. Altogether, 78 cricketers went under the hammer.

Without a single match being played yet — the first is in April this year — the IPL has already been a huge money spinner: teams sold for some $700 million, television rights for $918 million over 10 years, the title rights for five years for $50 million. All this is very big money and points to the kind of profit which is expected to be made from this new league in the Twenty20 version of cricket, which proved to be such a hit last year.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the organiser of the IPL, has said that the aim is to bring in new viewers and keep interest in cricket alive across all demographics. Last year’s world championship in this quick — three hours at the most — version of the game attracted a wider audience than the usual. Women, for instance, found this a more digestible game, which almost resembles baseball in the way it is played.

There are some caveats here: there is a threat to conventional cricket, but if the IPL is not allowed to move beyond its allotted six weeks a year, that danger can be contained. It has to remain a marquee event.

The players contracted to IPL will not be able to play for their countries during this tournament, so dates will have to be juggled and rearranged. There is a real danger that the smaller cricketing nations will get the short end of the stick when it comes to tournament dates. That is something which the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the BCCI have to watch out for.

Also, the excitement over the money invested so far should not cloak the fact that the actual revenue flow from this tournament is still up in the air. Whether the expectation matches reality will determine IPL’s future.

There is the other matter of audience interest. Even given the fact that cricket is a religion in India, much of the fan interest comes from watching one country pitted against another. The league system — even as it already exists at the domestic level —gets very few takers. It then remains to be seen whether IPL will be a hyped wonder or genuinely adds value to the game.