‘India watches Indian cricketers. India doesn’t watch cricket’

At the Bvlgari Hotel London, a five-star hotel on the edge of Hyde Park, in
June 2017, Brendon McCullum declared, ‘All of us are unashamed T20
mercenaries now.’

McCullum, who had retired from a brilliant international career the previous year, was exactly the sort of player coveted by T20 leagues around the world. Signing him, along with a raft of other elite players, was seen as a harbinger of good times to come for South Africa’s brand-new T20 franchise tournament. Having the launch in London was designed to affirm that this competition was the Global T20 League, as its name declared. It was envisaged that combining many of the best players in the world with several Indian owners, who would drive interest in India, would create a league with global appeal.

Four months later, these illusions were scorched. The first season of the Global T20 League was canceled after failing to secure sufficient broadcasting revenue and sponsorship income. The debacle ended up losing Cricket South Africa an estimated £11 million – about half their total cash reserves – and the job of their chief executive, Haroon Lorgat. A year later, another league was canceled before its first ball: the UAE T20x, a T20 franchise tournament in the UAE. In August 2019, a third league – the Euro T20 Slam, a competition featuring sides from Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands – was also canceled before its first season. All the while, most T20 leagues around the world were consistently posting financial losses.

All of this shattered the myth that T20 tournaments guarantee a profit.
Instead, creating a T20 league is more like starting a Silicon Valley company: the few that are most successful make gargantuan amounts of cash, while most of their rivals hemorrhage cash.

Traditionally, international cricket subsidized domestic matches. These Fixtures
– between counties, states or regions – could justifiably operate at a loss
because these matches were the nurseries of international cricketers.
The status of international cricket was instantly transformed with the
inception of the Indian Premier League in 2008. The elite of the game – in
terms of fan interest, quality of play and player remuneration – was no longer confined to international matches.

Many leading players now had a better-paid alternative to the international game. India, who did more than anyone else to create this new ecosystem, was the one country completely immune from these forces, because of the sums their players earned from playing international cricket. Since its creation, the IPL has not merely got stronger; it has also made international cricket weaker, by destroying the international game’s near-monopoly over the sport’s best players.

Before the IPL, only around 2% of the Indian board’s total broadcasting
rights came from domestic cricket. Today, thanks to a $2.55 billion contract
for the IPL rights from 2018 to 2023, 71% of India’s broadcasting revenue
comes from the IPL, while only 29% comes from home internationals.

Even if Indian internationals remained worth slightly more on a per game
basis, the metamorphosis of the value of domestic cricket spoke to how T20
has completely recalibrated the economics of cricket.

For the first time, cricket has a domestic league that is a serious player in the global sports broadcasting landscape. Broadcasting rights for the IPL are worth $8.5 million per game – four times what each NBA match is worth, and two-thirds what each English Premier League game costs, although the IPL has a significantly shorter season.

From its first game, the IPL has been so utterly out of kilter with all that
domestic cricket was before that it induced jealousy in other cricket boards.
Naturally, they sought to create their own versions.

‘Matches include fashion shows, after-match parties, and entertainment,’
wrote Yorkshire chief executive Stewart Regan in an email to other county
executives in 2010. ‘they have launched the word “CRICKETAINMENT”
which I think is really innovative.’

there were certainly broader lessons from the IPL, though not necessarily
those Regan proclaimed. Unlike in England’s T20 Blast, every IPL game was
televised, enabling an easily understandable narrative to develop around the competition.

Perhaps most pertinent was the importance of competitive balance, an idea the IPL had embraced from US sports. through salary caps that stopped teams stockpiling all the best players, the IPL protected the fundamental uncertainty of who would win any game: a crucial point of difference in an age of more predictable international cricket, marked by the growing divergence in financial resources between countries and the increasing salience of home advantage.

Even so, anyone studying the IPL could not ignore that the competition was unique. Ultimately this was not a reflection on the failings or lack of imagination of other administrators. It spoke to a simple truth: the IPL was built on India’s enormous population, growing wealth and profound love of both cricket and celebrity, a cocktail that no other country could ever replicate.

This did not stop them from trying. Since the Indian Premier League was formed, the Big Bash League, Caribbean Premier League, Pakistan Super League, Bangladesh Premier League, and the new English franchise competition have all been launched. Barring Bangladesh, these nations all had T20 leagues before the IPL. But now they hoped to channel the glitz – and wealth – of India’s competition.