IPL - The Business of Cricket

IPL - The Business of Cricket

Whether the game of cricket came out winner or not at the end of the first season of Indian Premier League will depend on a person’s perspective and on the definition of success but it has to be accepted that the event succeeded in converting cricket into a big business opportunity. You can praise IPL or you can criticize it but if you live in a cricket playing nation you cannot ignore it. Players from all major and new cricket playing countries want to play in IPL and the media companies are vying to get a piece of the pie. The spectators can’t seem to get enough of the action. IPL has truly touched a chord in the hearts of not only the younger generation that want rapid fire action on the field but also the older people who felt five days was too long a period to wait to get a result. The purists who felt the game has been eroded of its basic nature are beginning to realize that it is still cricket and not very different from the real thing except that it is faster paced. They are slowly converting to the new religion and have started nodding in approval though they are still a bit nostalgic and a little overwhelmed.

Indian Premier League (IPL) in its first avatar had everything it promised: exciting Twenty20 games full of 6s and 4s, glamour in the form of various business tycoons and Bollywood biggies endorsing most of the teams, big crowds and who can forget the red skin cheerleaders trying to excite an already ecstatic crowd. Though they put on an impressive show but had it not been for the TV cameramen, who kept focusing on their calisthenics every time a boundary was hit or a wicket fell, they would have perhaps not even be noticed after the initial curiosity had worn off. Then there were the inevitable blame games and the media hype associated with it. All these together with the millions of dollars finding their way to the coffers of the Board of Control of Cricket of India (BCCI) truly made the tournament the biggest cricketing event in the history of cricket. IPL certainly took its time settling down and in due course various lessons would have been learnt by everyone connected with the game and the business of cricket. The organizers, players, captains and even the viewers can all contribute in making the second IPL season a bigger and better event.

Cricket has evolved over the years and the rate of evolution (if the expression is acceptable) has increased tremendously over the last two decades. After sticking to the longer version of the game for centuries the game was transformed by the introduction of a 65-over one day game in 1962 in England. One-day cricket began between English county teams on May 2, 1962. Leicestershire beat Derbyshire and Northamptonshire beat Nottinghamshire over 65 overs in the "Midlands Knock-Out Cup". The first One-day International (ODI) match was played in Melbourne in 1971, and the quadrennial cricket World Cup began in 1975. Many of the "packaging" innovations, such as coloured clothing, were introduced in the ‘World Series’ Cricket, a "rebel" series set up outside the cricketing establishment by Australian entrepreneur, the late Kerry Packer, who saw the great business potential of “instant cricket’ which promised a result at the end of 60 overs in 99% of the games played where as most five day and three day games ended in a draw. There was a great hue and cry raised then by the ‘purists’ of the game who felt that the great game of cricket had been compromised and its principles diluted. They felt that cricket had been commercialized and no longer remained a gentleman’s game. And just when instant cricket came to be accepted by the end of the twentieth century with as many as seven ‘one day’ world cups organized successfully and ‘One Day Internationals’ (ODIs) becoming an integral part of international cricket tours, along came the Twenty20 version to shake up purists out of their cocoon one more time. India was slow to accept it. There were hardly any twenty20 tournaments played in India at any level when Dhoni and his ‘dare devils’ stormed the bastions of the relatively more experienced teams and claimed the first ever world cup in this version of the game. It fired up an already crazy nation which had been itching to celebrate a major achievement ever since Kapil Dev’s giant killing team won the cricket world cup in the fifty over version, way back in 1983. National and International tournaments have been lined up for the next couple of years. Many clubs have been organized and new organizations have sprung up to challenge and question the monopoly of the BCCI in India. Even the blind could see the fantastic business opportunity that would change the economics of the game locally and globally. Sahara India with Kapil Dev’s blessings saw the opening and immediately took the lead.

Sahara sponsored ICL (Indian Cricket League) seized the opportunity and started a domestic 20Twenty tournament with players drawn from all cricketing nations. ICL had quite a successful first season despite tremendous opposition from the establishment (read BCCI), what with not allowing their grounds to be used for the games and threat to ban the players who participated in what was construed to be a rebel organization, reminiscent of the Kerry Packer rebel World Series. Though the BCCI was caught napping and was late of the blocks but by organizing the IPL it has put the stamp of approval on the 20Twenty version of the game in India. There are a lot of matters, legal and other, which still have to be sorted out but one thing is certain that Cricket has won a major victory and it is healthier and richer because of IPL. Things can only get better and more exciting for everyone involved. No one knows what will be the next visible change in the format in the world of cricket yet one thing beautiful about the evolution process here is that it is not Darwinian in nature in the sense that it is not about survival of the fittest. All versions of the game are alive and kicking. One is already waiting for the next avatar. Though the first inaugural Champion of Champions tournament, to be played between the top eight teams drawn from India, England, South Africa and Pakistan had to be postponed, it has already been conceptualized and it is only a matter of time when we have ‘World Club Cricket’ championship which could be the next big thing in the sporting world. Its payout was supposed to be to the tune of $3,000000.

Purists often speak of Twenty20 cricket disparagingly. They felt as if a sacred vow had been broken; as if the fine game of cricket had been reduced to something absurdly simplistic; where ‘sloggers’ rule the roost, where hand-eye co-ordination mattered more than finely honed cricketing technique perfected at the playgrounds of Eton, Harrow or Indian Public schools and where bowlers are irrelevant. If you’ve been watching carefully, you will know this isn’t true. Twenty20 is not a dilution of the game but an intensification of it. It is filled with life-and-death urgency. Each team gets to face just 120 deliveries in a match, and every ball counts. There is no space for sloppiness, error or sluggishness. A single mistake can shift the momentum a single over can change the pattern of the game and it can happen many times in the span of just twenty overs. The batsmen have to try and score off every ball. The demands on the batsmen, bowlers and fielders are much greater in a 20 Twenty match than in the longer versions. But this is cricket. The more it changes the more it is the same and everyone is loving it. All this makes for a fantastic spectacle. The game of cricket has changed beyond recognition as far as the pace it is played at is concerned. We are witnessing more results even in Test matches because players have positive result oriented mindset. Losing one day is not a big deal because; with so many matches being played they know they will find themselves on the winning side on another day. They play the game like a game should be played; intensely not seriously. They play with intent to win but without much fear of loss. So IPL and 20Twenty cricket make good cricketing sense.

The best reason IPL is good for cricket is that it is good for cricketers. Local and International cricketers are earning so much from it that there is loose talk of them preferring the IPL to Test cricket. Honestly, that is a problem that cricket control boards will grapple with for the ICC to sort out. Increased opportunities for players can only be good. And in the IPL, these opportunities are very widespread. First to benefit from IPL are India’s domestic players – they no longer have to battle regional politics to get into state sides, or fight to get into the exclusive and elitist national team. They have eight buyers for their services, all made to compete, by market forces, for the best talent. A domestic player who plays two seasons of the IPL or even the ICL stands to make more money than he would in an entire ‘Ranji’ career. Suddenly players like Virat Kohli, Ashok Dinda and Prasanta Saha become known personalities all over the country despite the fact that they did not have a great outing. Youngsters are getting a look in and are rubbing shoulders with the veterans. There were as many as sixteen under nineteen players playing in IPL. They along with other young players like Suresh Raina, Praveen Kumar, Robin Uthapa, Shaun Marsh, Manpreet Gony, Sreesanth,
Yuvraj, Ishanth Sharma, Yousuf Pathan, Tanvir, to name a few had a phenomenal learning experience. They hobnobbed with the titans of the game and learned valuable cricketing lessons. It is a great time to be a young cricketer.

There is one niggling issue though which probably is not good for cricket and that is the issue of confrontation between BCCI over rivalry between the promoters of ICL with BCCI. BCCI is running rough shod and is giving critics of the game of cricket a chance to train their guns on it. ICL (the rival cricket league) whose players are being shut out by the crass behaviour of the BCCI is matter of concern and needs to be resolved in the spirit of democracy. There may not be easy solutions at hand but massive efforts must be made to find a way out. The ICL forced the IPL into existence by providing competition to the establishment, but is now losing money, and may not last long. It is a problem rooted in the nature of many sports boards across the world: the BCCI is not a public limited company and therefore is not accountable to shareholders; nor is it a government body, accountable to taxpayers. It has a monopoly on representative international cricket and on the domestic feeder systems for it. There is no legal precedent anywhere in the world, for breaking this up. The ICL tried to provide competition to BCCI, as Kerry Packer once did to the International body, but the BCCI craftily countered it with the IPL. The IPL introduces some competition within the world of cricket – but that world remains governed by one unaccountable body. But legal hassles are beyond the scope this essay.

Though there are some disturbing issues that will have to be resolved IPL is not only good cricket but more importantly it is also good economics. It is expected to bring in an income of $1 billion for the BCCI over the next ten years. All this revenue will be directed to a central pool, 40% of which will go to IPL, 54% to franchisees and 6% as prize money. After ten years IPL will get 50%, franchisees 45% and prize money 5%. Television rights alone that have gone to a consortium consisting of India’s Sony Entertainment Television and the Singapore based World Sport Group (WSG) will bring in $ 1.026 billion dollars by 2017. It is envisaged that IPL will go public by 2012 and be listed on the bourses in India and abroad. Sony-WSG have re-sold parts of the broadcasting rights geographically to other companies and is expected to make a huge profit though terms of all their resale of rights is not entirely known. This is just the beginning. IPL has the potential of marketing the game on a truly global scale which could become as big as the ‘football’ market. Two of the franchisees i.e. Kolkata Knightrider and Rajasthan Royals have already broken even with a profit of thirteen crore and six crore respectively in the very first season which is remarkable. It augers well for the teams in future as highest profit shown by Kolkata Knightriders, which finished third from the bottom makes it clear that good management can help make decent profits in the game. IPL has opened up tremendous business and professional opportunities for entrepreneurs, advertisement professionals, sports managers, TV presenters, sport commentators and journalists, physiotherapists and sport psychologists, cheer leaders and event management companies. There is buzz of excitement and expectation all around. It has turned cricket into a big business opportunity.