Panelists:The sixth season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is round the corner. The success of the earlier five instalments of the tournament has raised people’s expectations from this year’s tournament, which promises to be bigger and better than ever. The IPL has proved to be a great platform for everyone —players are able to display their talent and build a good career for themselves, investors get a chance to cash in on the popularity of the sport and audience gets to watch a high-energy cricket tournament and cheer for their favourite teams and players.
Mr. Viren Rasquinha: Former Captain, Indian Hockey Team
Mr. Neeraj Bharadwaj: Managing Director, The Carlyle Group
Ms. Sonali Chander: Sports Editor, NDTV
The IPL’s success can be gauged from the various titles that have been bestowed on it so far. Forbes magazine called it the “world’s hottest sports league” while cricketers generally regard it as the ‘godfather of T20 cricket’. The cricketing franchise’s brand value, in just six years, is estimated to be about USD3 billion. Approximately USD723.59 million was given in reward to the original eight participating teams and the tournament recorded a viewership of more than 160 million in 2012.
However, the IPL’s instant success has also raised some eyebrows. The critics of the franchise have often expressed their concern over the business model of the IPL. They wonder how the franchise has managed to generate so much money in such a short span of time. Above all, they are disappointed at how the IPL has allegedly glamorised the gentleman’s game. The IPL has also invited several controversies, especially those related to sport fixing, doping and corruption. While the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) took swift and appropriate action against the five IPL players who were found guilty for spot fixing last year, the franchise is yet to come clean on several other allegations of irregularities in its functioning. The question, therefore, is if the IPL is really the way forward for cricket? It’s interesting to note that the T20 format did not find support from cricketing experts, players, audience or the media until a few years ago. Broadcasters as well as advertisers, too, hesitated to invest into T20 tournaments, as they were not profitable. However, the success of the first IPL season in 2008 forced its critics to change their opinion on the franchise model. Today, six years since its inception, the IPL has become one of the most watched sporting events and its success has been acknowledged by critics and experts alike.
If there is one question that the supporters of the IPL haven’t been able to answer to everyone’s satisfaction yet, it is this — Is the IPL more about money and less about cricket? The answer to that is that there are no clear answers. It is unlikely that this riddle will be resolved anytime soon either. The T20 format is definitely different from the One-Day International (ODI) and the Test formats of the sport. The organisers of the IPL hope that just as people developed a liking for — and got addicted to — the limited over format after labelling it as the ‘Test killer’ in the 1980s, they will also embrace T20 cricket in the coming years.
The bigger question that no one has asked so far is if the IPL model can work wonders for other sports too? Can an IPL-like business model give others sports in India a leg up? For that to happen, the IPL needs to first convince pundits and audience that it is as much about cricket as it is about money and that the franchise-based model is the future of every sport across the world.
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