Incessant Profit League: Why IPL Fails Cricket

Incessant Profit League: Why IPL Fails Cricket

Nitya Kakade 

FY B.Sc. (2024-2028)

Estimated Reading time: 4 minutes

Consider this: Your car’s tyre regularly needs to be filled with air. You need to fill it with just the right amount of air – if you have too little, you end up with a puncture, and if you have too much, the tyre bursts. Of course, this is not about your car. The tyre here is IPL, and the air is commercialisation. Commercialisation in moderation is necessary to ensure financial sustainability, however, when there is too much focus on money one loses sight of the real objective of the game.

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The Indian Premier League has transformed Indian cricket into a billion dollar industry. In 2023, all teams combined received Rs 4670 crores from the BCCI, compared to Rs 2205 crores in 2022. This data represents solely the money earned from the BCCI, meaning it excludes earnings from sponsors and brand endorsement deals. Clearly, IPL is a very profitable business. While this transformation has brought numerous benefits, it also has multiple downsides.

The problem of over commercialisation lies within the fundamentals of IPL itself. This is visible right from the beginning, at the heart of the tournament: The Auctions. IPL presents an economic model where players can be traded like commodities to the highest bidder. The players are offered highly inflated salaries, and the award of celebrity status appears more important than athleticism. Franchises often invest in athletes based on their potential to attract viewership and sponsors rather than their on-field performance. 

This commodification does not just hover dangerously over a moral grey area, but the commercial pressure also impacts the players themselves. Several players who were taking a break from international cricket returned for the IPL season this year. KL Rahul sustained an injury while playing against England in February, but he announced his participation in the IPL starting in March. Hardik Pandya, who dropped out during the 2023 ODI World Cup due to an injury, made a comeback in the 2024 IPL. Kohli had taken a break to spend time with his family, and returned after two months for the IPL. Shreyas Iyer complained of back pain in February, following which he was dropped without an explanation from the match against England. Despite the rumours that he might not be able to play in the IPL, he emerged as the captain of Kolkata Knight Riders. Now, this might all be a huge coincidence but there’s a pattern here. It’s interesting how each of these players’ issues seemed to resolve just before they were offered extravagant amounts of money in the IPL. It makes one wonder whether personal gains are more important to these players than representing the country at an international level.

The constant pressure to maintain popularity and consequently secure higher earnings also has its toll on the players. The team Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) led by KL Rahul faced a harsh loss against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the 2024 league. Post the match, LSG owner Sanjeev Goenka publicly berated Rahul about his disappointment in the team’s performance. The incident sparked a debate about whether the owners should be allowed to criticise the players like this, when they know less about the game than the players themselves. In moments like these it is evident that the balance of power between players and owners has tilted in favour of the latter, and the pressure from those at the top seems increasingly disconnected from the realities of the sport.

The imbalance of power also extends to the league as a whole. The wins are dominated by a select few franchises, namely MI, CSK and KKR, because their owners are wealthy enough to afford the top players. Many others fall out of the race to the top because they simply do not have the funding, and some like Kochi Tuskers Kerala, Deccan Chargers, and Pune Warriors India are forced to withdraw from IPL altogether. The disparity reduces the competitiveness of the league and the gap between the haves and have-nots is ever widening.

The car of IPL is going uphill on a precarious path, and judging by the current state of things, the pressure in its tyre is pretty close to reaching the critical point where it bursts. The commercialisation which once acted as a fuel for growth now risks causing an implosion. And the question that remains is: how long do we have until then?