The Indian Premier League is, by all accounts, a sporting behemoth. Attracting superstar cricketers from all over the world — including the likes of Glenn Maxwell, Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler — while providing burgeoning Indian talents such as Rinku Singh and Shivam Dube a step up into the big leagues and more often than not, a shot at the national team.

In its 15th year, the tournament is raking in incredibly large amounts of money, recently adding a $6 billion broadcast deal to its kitty, one of the many deals that has taken the league’s valuation to $10.9 billion, effectively making it a decacorn, a startup term to indicate a company valued at over $10 billion. The latest valuation makes the cricket league the second-most valuable sporting league in the world, slotting in between America’s National Football League (NFL), valued at $16 billion, and Major League Baseball, valued at $10.7 billion.

When the tournament began in 2008, it quickly rocketed to a billion-dollar valuation, making it one of India’s first unicorns, even before online retailer Flipkart — valued at $37.6 billion as of 2022 — managed the feat, in 2012.

Since then, the league has gone from strength to strength, with the very first player auction seeing Mahendra Singh Dhoni go on the block for Rs 9.5 crore, while the most recent auction in 2023 saw Sam Curran bought for Rs 18.5 crore, an all time record in the tournament and almost double of what the very first auction witnessed.

How did the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) pull all this off, in just a decade and half?

Sponsorships
In addition to the aforementioned media rights, the cricketing body relies on sponsorships and the league’s global profile to rake in the moolah.

From lavish opening ceremonies to superstar franchise owners, the IPL has it all. And it began with one man, Lalit Modi, who lured broadcasters and corporates alike, bagging over $1.7 billion for the BCCI. The very first edition was sponsored by DLF, whose name was splashed all over the tournament, with every six hit over the course of the tournament tagged with a “DLF Maximum” banner. With 99 million viewers tuning in that first year, the Indian cricketing body made a neat Rs 350 crore profit.

That number has only risen with each passing year, with the last edition in 2022 netting the BCCI Rs 800 crore in revenue.

For the first five years of the tournament, from 2008 to 2012, DLF shelled out Rs 200 crore. The following five years saw PepsiCo as the title sponsor, the rights for which cost the FMCG conglomerate Rs 397 crore. But, in 2015, just three years into the deal, PepsiCo pulled out, forcing the BCCI to find another title sponsor.

Eventually, the board landed on smartphone maker Vivo, trading the rights for Rs 200 crore for the remaining two years. The Chinese manufacturer out bid its competitors for the following five years, from 2018 to 2022, bidding Rs 2,199 crore. That deal, too, ended prematurely in 2020, following clashes between the Indian Army and Chinese People’s Liberation Army at the Line of Actual Control.

For the 2022 and 2023 seasons of the league, steel-to-salt conglomerate Tata took over the title sponsor deal, shelling out Rs 335 crore per year.

As Vivo had already committed Rs 996 crore for the two years’ title sponsorship — Rs 484 crore in 2022 and 512 crore in 2023 — the Chinese smartphone manufacturer will continue to shell out the difference for both years, Rs 183 crore for 2022 and Rs 211 crore for 2023.

Betting on the broadcast
But the BCCI’s biggest grosser continues to be the rights to broadcast the tournament itself.

Back in June 2022, the cricketing body conducted a media rights auction that saw the BCCI walk away with Rs 48,390 crore ($6.2 billion) for a five-year deal, from 2023, through to 2027.

The cricketing league has held media rights auctions twice before the 2022 edition, with the very first one in 2008 and the second in 2017.

Sony Pictures Network won the IPL broadcasting rights for the 2008 to 2017 period with a winning bid of Rs 8,200 crore.

The next auction for the media rights from 2017 through to 2022 were auctioned off in 2017, with Star India placing the winning bid of Rs 16,347.5 crore, almost double of the first auction. A trend that continued into the next auction in 2022.

Disney-Star (Disney acquired the Indian broadcaster in 2017) retained the five-year television broadcast rights for television for Rs 23,575 crore, while Mukesh Ambani’s Viacom18 bagged the digital rights for Rs 23,750 crore, while the remaining amount came from the sale of the international rights.

Where does the big money go?
What does the BCCI do with all this in its coffers? Teams get a massive chunk of these earnings, with a 40-50% revenue share guaranteed for the franchises.

Amounts differ from team to team, with high-value franchises like the Chennai Super Kings — which has a massive pull thanks to the long-term presence of MS Dhoni — and Mumbai Indians, who are serial champions, garnering bigger shares than others.

According to Forbes, in 2021, the average revenue for the original eight teams was $35 million, with an average operating income of $9 million.

Media reports suggest that Mumbai Indians’ revenue for 2023 will jump by 109.1% from Rs 383.6 crore, last year, to Rs 802 crore and Chennai Super Kings will see their revenue jump by 124.9% for the same time frame. The revenue jumps will also see franchise owners India Cements and Reliance, respectively, profit.

Franchises also earn from brand sponsorships, prize money, ticket sales revenue and merchandise sales.

Virat Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore signed this year a three-year sponsorship deal with Qatar Airways, reportedly worth Rs 75 crore. While this is one of the biggest deals in the league, the biggest sponsorship deal is held by Mumbai Indians’ three-year agreement with Slice for Rs 90 crore, signed in 2022.

The prize money for this year’s tournament is set at Rs 20 crore, with the runners-up set to pocket Rs 13 crore, while the remaining two teams that make it to the playoffs will get Rs seven crore each.

According to Forbes, which estimated the franchises’ valuations at an average $67 million in the first year after the tournament began in 2008, the IPL’s expansion to 10 teams has seen the average shoot up to $1.04 billion, an annualized growth rate of 24%. Which is well over double of what leagues like the NFL, which reported an annualized growth of 10%, and the National Basketball Association (NBA) saw a growth rate of 16% for franchise values.

Offshoots and growth
The continued rise of the IPL has led to the BCCI spawning a sister league, the Women’s IPL, which alone raked in over Rs 4,600 crore for the cricketing body after team rights were auctioned off last year. In comparison, the men’s IPL teams were auctioned off for Rs 2,894 crore in 2008.

“Today is a historic day in cricket as the bidding for teams of the inaugural WPL broke the records of the inaugural Men’s IPL in 2008! Congratulations to the winners as we garnered Rs.4669.99 crore in total bid,” BCCI Secretary Jay Shah had said after the auction.

The numbers for the league are only expected to grow in the coming years. An increase in advertiser participation is anticipated due to a rise in viewership on both TV and digital platforms compared to the previous edition, ET has reported recently, citing leading media experts. As per the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) data shared by Disney Star, the first 29 matches of the IPL’s TV coverage garnered an unprecedented 40.9 crore viewers. As viewership has grown, the war for advertising dollars has reached a fever pitch.

A media planner has told ET that companies looking to create a brand impact through spot buying on TV will now need to spend anywhere between ₹20-30 crore. Star Sports is offering spot-buy deals at ₹14 lakh per 10-second spot, the ET report revealed, citing an anonymous source. A media planner told ET that companies looking to create a brand impact through spot buying on TV will now need to spend anywhere between ₹20-30 crore.