The Indian Premier League (IPL) media rights for the 2023–2027 cycle—both television and digital rights—were sold earlier this week for an incredible Rs 48,390 crore, almost three times the amount the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) received for them during the 2018–2022 cycle. With 370 matches spread over five seasons, the BCCI will make INR 49.6 lakh for every ball only from broadcasting. Keep reading to know more about the IPL founder story!
TV audience figures
It makes sense why television networks spend so much money to cover the Indian Premier League (IPL). 367 million people watched the Mumbai Indians vs. Chennai Super Kings league-stage match in 2021 (not a playoff game). Just 167 million people watched the highest-viewed international match of the year, the 2019 World Cup final, while just 440,000 people watched the Boxing Day Test match of the 2021–2022 Ashes. When one considers the lengths of the three matches, the numbers appear even more astonishing.
The numbers show just how enormous the Indian cricket fan base is. The second-most populous nation in the world continues to be primarily focused on one sport, despite the emergence of other sports and leagues that go along with it. The IPL theme music & songs composed for all the franchises have added to the flair of the IPL.
Who founded the IPL?
Although many observed this, Lalit Modi was the first to grasp its significance and attempt to capitalize on it. The IPL’s inaugural season in 2008 is typically where the story starts, although it shouldn’t because the league was initially imagined in the middle of the 1990s. This was how the IPL was founded:
Modi, having witnessed the NBA in the United States, envisioned an Indian cricket league like the NBA, featuring privately owned teams headquartered in cities, matches held under floodlights, and live broadcasts for four to six weeks per year.
His logic was straightforward. Even while satellite TV has become more popular, it is still only available in urban areas. Teams would become more relatable if they were named after cities. Soap operas would be cricket’s rival as no other sport was sufficiently popular to compete with it. Cricket had to be presented as entertainment to do that.
The BCCI rejected it. They believed that the estimated revenue projections were unrealistically high. They had misjudged the volume of money to be made, even though they knew there was some. They also had no intention of “selling” cricket to commercial entities, even though they had no problem splitting the profits.
The Indian Cricket League (ICL), founded by Subhash Chandra in 2007 and based on the same premise but with a 20-over format, revived the abandoned plan. In response, the BCCI suspended all Indian players who participated in the ICL, so excluding the likes of Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Sehwag, Dhonis, Yuvraj, Kumble, and Zaheer.
They introduced the IPL shortly after that. And the likes of Dhoni went on to become the Kings of the IPL through their performances.
Lalit Modi was in command by this point. At last, his vision had materialized. The city-based teams with their logos, and the new three-hour format, Twenty20, which was just slightly longer than most Bollywood films, worked flawlessly with the idea of pitching cricket as a complete entertainment package.
Furthermore, it wouldn’t matter if someone missed a single episode of the two-month soap opera because there would be a new match every night. Therefore, Lalit Modi is the Baap of the IPL as he’s the one behind the launch of the IPL!
The organizations realized the enormity of what lay ahead. The bidding then got underway. Cricket was eternally altered, possibly irrevocably.
Impact of international relations between players
Australia had been visited by India months before the 2008 IPL season. There was a lot of animosity during the tour, with Andrew Symonds accusing Harbhajan Singh of making racial remarks. Following Harbhajan’s ban by match referee Mike Procter, the BCCI threatened to cancel the tour. It was astonishing that the tour ended amicably when you factored in the umpiring disputes.
But that was all moot at the home auctions, back when the Indians were still living in Australia. Symonds became the most expensive overseas cricket player at USD 1.35 million. With players from all around the world participating in the IPL, along with the extraordinary money that went along with it, all hostilities were eliminated.
India would eventually become even more influential in the cricket world, even though they already knew they could make the decisions.
But English cricketers were unimpressed with the IPL thus far. It coincided with England’s summer, and West Indian and English cricket players had previously been enticed by the Super Series, an initiative spearheaded by American billionaire Allen Stanford.
Early in 2009, Stanford was arrested on suspicion of fraud, which negatively impacted the second reason (he was ultimately sentenced to 110 years in jail). The England and Wales Cricket Board consented to release their players for 21 days as soon as Lalit Modi made contact. Englishmen Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff were that season’s most expensive cricket players, each taking home USD 1.55 million.
The West Indian cricket players and their board got into a salary dispute shortly after the IPL. Their board was forced to field a substitute XI in the home series against Bangladesh since the entire team boycotted it. There would be several arguments after that.
Big players like Dwayne Bravo and Chris Gayle eventually made it plain that they would rather compete in franchise-based competitions like the Indian Premier League (IPL) than in Tests or One-Day Internationals for the West Indies. This would soon become the norm everywhere in the world. The BCCI has had almost total control over the cricket economy and, by extension, the sport itself.
The BCCI has maintained its dominance over cricket off the pitch as the IPL has grown; in fact, the ICC no longer issues tenders for media rights until the IPL bids are acquired.
Indian cricket players are prohibited by the BCCI from participating in international T20 competitions before retirement to ensure that no one else gets a piece of the action (that is, in this case, top Indian cricket stars). Their insistence on having a separate IPL window in the cricket calendar has been a hotly contested issue.
The IPL cricket betting online enterprise has also been significantly boosted by the financial success of the IPL.
How have things changed on the pitch?
There is the money—amounts that, for some, can change their entire lives. Beyond that, though, there are clear changes in cricketing. Kids, even uncapped adolescents, can now socialize with elite Indian and international cricket players and coaches. Success in the IPL propels previously unknown cricketers into an instant sensation and even raises their chances of being selected for the national team.
The structural transformation of Indian cricket brought about by the IPL is less evident. An Indian cricket player for many years had to navigate a geopolitical ladder that went from club to state to zone to national team. They also had little chance if the team they played for was too small to attract the attention of the national selection. Thus, an Indian cricketer’s future was typically predetermined from birth until they moved bases.
When the BCCI established the Talent Resource Development Wing (TRDW) in 2002 to find talent outside of the established cricket powerhouses, this became the first of many changes. Soon after, M.S. Dhoni, Irfan Pathan, Suresh Raina, R.P. Singh, Piyush Chawla, and S. Sreesanth were seen by the TRDW scouts.
The state-level T20 leagues frequently supply food for the IPL teams. Varun Chakravarthy, for instance, changed the long-standing geopolitical hierarchy of Indian cricket by moving from the Tamil Nadu Premier League to the Indian team and then back to the IPL. Before him, Pravin Tambe, 41, was chosen directly to play in the IPL by Mumbai club cricket.
They are not alone in this. Now, cricket’s next big thing may come from any place. Hence, both on and off the pitch, the IPL is unlike anything Indian cricket has experienced, even regarding the IPL match betting online.
More details
If you found this blog on the IPL founder interesting, don’t forget to check out the IPL 2024 Orange Cap List page for more interesting content.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1) Who is the IPL’s founder?
The IPL initiative’s driving force, BCCI Vice-President Lalit Modi, released information about the competition’s structure, prize money, franchise revenue structure, and squad makeup guidelines.
2) When did the IPL start?
Ten teams from ten different locations in India presently make up the IPL, which was founded in 2008.
3) Who came up with the concept to launch the IPL?
The concept of an Indian Cricket League (ICL), first put up by Lalit Modi in the mid-1990s, planted the roots for the IPL. Modi asked Iyush Pandey of Ogilvy, former cricket player Arun Lal, and senior cricket administrator Amrit Mathur to draft a plan for an Indian cricket league modeled after the NBA.
