In a different league of its own

With the 17th edition of IPL starting today, the tournament has come a long way as a multinational sporting franchise despite its tender age of 16 years. The T20 league has managed to draw the biggest names in cricket and has raised the level of the game. This, in turn, has helped cricket grow deeper roots in a country obsessed with the sport, and made a difference to lesser franchises such as the Women’s League, which concluded its second edition with much success last week. India’s cricketing board has made handsome gains from the IPL franchise, which helps to seed more talent in the country. As the world’s richest cricketing board, BCCI is now the mainstay for growth of the sport internationally, riding on the huge popularity of IPL and the growing enthusiasm for WPL.

Comparison is inescapable with other sporting franchises, such as football’s English Premier League (EPL). Here, IPL still comes up short on several parameters, notably popularity and player compensation, two interlinked factors. Television viewership of the club football franchise is streets ahead of IPL, and eye-watering player contracts are limited by design in the cricket league. EPL draws more international talent – players as well as management – again, by design. IPL faces its steepest hurdle in popularising a sport internationally within the restrictions imposed on foreign players and the amounts they can be bid for. The marginal cost of popularising cricket in India, on the other hand, is astonishing high, as broadcasting rights would bear out.

IPL’s greatest strength is also its biggest handicap – the yawning gap in popularity of cricket in the country and the rest of the world. The franchise will remain a niche offering as long as cricket does not become a mainstream sport, on the lines of soccer or tennis, in other countries. Beyond the obvious spectacle that IPL is, there is a rising tide of revenue for ICC to spread among less well-endowed boards of playing nations. That is a fair legacy for an event still in its teens.