When the sale of Rajasthan Royals (RR) and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) was confirmed on March 24, it was a proud moment for Indian cricket and Indian sport. With this move, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has surpassed $16 billion in valuation and is moving closer to becoming the world’s biggest sporting league.
By the time of the next TV rights auction, the IPL is likely to become the topmost sporting league in the world, a position now occupied by the American Football League (NFL), valued at USD 22 billion (annual revenue). The Major League Baseball (MLB) is valued at USD 12 billion, while the globally popular NBA (National Basketball Association) is at USD 11 billion, and the Premier League football of England, watched closely in India, is at USD 8 billion.
Unprecedented, but why should BCCI get holy cow status
The sale price is unprecedented or very rare for any Indian company. In recent times, the other big valuation for a fully Indian private company was e-commerce company Flipkart, which was sold to British retail giant Walmart for $16 billion for a 77% stake, implying it was worth about $20 billion in 2018. Normally, a company is valued at ten times its annual revenue.
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With irony writ large, the BCCI which owns the IPL, thus emerges as perhaps the most profitable company in India without doing any work or business or even paying tax. All it has to do is auction the media rights for various cricket events and conduct the auctions. The rest is the clubs’ headache.
Now the government should remove the charity organisation tag from BCCI and ask it to pay tax. There is no reason why BCCI should get a holy cow status, charity organisation status, and the most profitable company in India tag with a handful of employees sitting in the Mumbai office. No one really knows who takes the call in important matters.
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All officials of BCCI are temporary staff and the top jobs are all honorary jobs based on mostly fixed elections. The last two presidents of BCCI, Roger Binny and the current president Mithun Manhas, have not spoken a word about cricket, policy, team selection, or future plans. The shadowy presence of Jay Shah, who was secretary and then president and is now president of ICC, has also not made any public statements about the game, the money, and the business of sport. The BCCI also has an IPL council which is directly in charge of the league, and is also headed by one of its officials of BCCI who takes turns to be the temporary chairman of the council.
The TV viewership has also gone through the roof. For IPL 2025, on television alone, Star Sports delivered 456 billion minutes of watch time
Aditya Birla, Blackstone jump in
There had been reports about two clubs on the verge of being sold. Finally, a consortium comprising the Aditya Birla Group, leading US sports businessman David Blitzer, private equity giant Blackstone, and Satyan Gajwani of the Times of India (son-in-law of Samir Jain, who owns the Times of India) sealed the deal to buy RCB for USD 1.78 billion (Rs 16,660 crore). The RCB was originally bought by Vijay Mallya in the name of United Breweries for USD 111.6 million. Diageo later took over the company. While the Birla group holds the majority stake, it is not clear how much each company paid. Aryaman Birla, the son of Aditya Birla, will be chairman. The Birla scion was in Royals team for a brief period, but could not make a mark.
The valuation of all IPL franchises has risen about 10 times in 18 years, which is huge. The Rajasthan Royals were the cheapest original buy at $67 million dollars.
The Rajasthan Royals were bought for USD 1.63 billion (Rs 15,286 crore) by US businessman Kal Somani, along with members of the Walmart family and the Ford Motor Company. The late Australian spin wizard Shane Warne has a 3% stake in Royals, which will fetch his family a huge amount.
Valuation of teams risen 10 times
The valuation of all IPL franchises has risen about 10 times in 18 years, which is huge. The Rajasthan Royals were the cheapest original buy at $67 million dollars. Though the franchises are valued very high, the players get only a minor portion. The lowest salary in the IPL is Rs 30 lakh which is chicken feed for such highly valued companies. The highest salary is in the region of over Rs 25 crore for top players per season.
The IPL also has salary caps, which are rare in other global leagues. This also helps the franchises hugely. The clubs also get to keep all ticket revenue from their home games, excluding advertising in the stadium and on the jerseys. “By my estimate over the next 10 years or so the media rights for the IPL (2027) should roughly be 10 to 12 times the current values of $1.2 billion a year,” wrote Narayan Ramachandran in Mint newspaper last year. He has been proved more than correct.
It is the easiest money any company could have made without doing anything much. No permanent employees, no office space, no regular salary payouts, no government permissions, matches take place for only two and a half months a year, and the owners, like Shah Rukh Khan, make only occasional appearances at the stadium and wave to the crowds.
Win or lose, money matters
It doesn’t even matter to the owners whether they actually win the IPL or not. Most of the team have won the league at some point over the years, showing the unpredictability of T20 cricket. The valuations keep growing year by year.
Cricket/IPL has really become big, with the highest viewership of any sport worldwide
According to the Mintbrand valuations have jumped by huge margins every year. In 2024, for instance, the brand valuation of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) grew by 52% over the previous year, Mumbai Indians (MI) by 36% and RCB by 67%. According to a data website, for clubs, there has been a compounded annual return of 20%, more than double the BSE Sensex return of 9% over the same period.
The TV viewership has also gone through the roof. For IPL 2025, on television alone, Star Sports delivered 456 billion minutes of watch time, while digital streaming on JioCinema recorded 23.1 billion views and 384.6 billion minutes of watch time, marking a 29% year-on-year surge.
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Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla, and her husband Jay Mehta bought Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for approximately Rs 262.5 crore in 2008. They, like other clubs, had to pay up the money only in 10 years, meaning Rs 30 crore a year. And even more than half of that the franchise got as revenue sharing of the TV rights. If Shah Rukh sells KKR, he will get over Rs 1,000 crore. The IPL franchise is a goose that lays the golden egg year after year.
Cricket/IPL has really become big, with the highest viewership of any sport worldwide. When it becomes the biggest sporting league in the world, cricket itself would have hit the biggest sixer.
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