International Journal of Recent Advances in Multidisciplinary Topics 26

Volume 3, Issue 8, August 2022

https://www.ijramt.com | ISSN (Online): 2582-7839

Commercialization of Sports in India –

A Study of IPL
Abir Banik1*, Aditya Dutta2, Soumyendu Mukhopadhyay3
1,2,3
Postgraduate Student, Department of Commerce, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India

Abstract: This paper presents a study on the commercialization

B. Indian Premier League (IPL) - An introduction
of sports in India with focus on IPL. The Indian Premier League is a global Twenty 20 cricket
championship league in India. It was initiated by Lalit Modi and
Keywords: IPL, Commercialization. the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). It comprises
of teams, consisting of players from all cricketing nations of the
1. Background of the Study world. The IPL was inaugurated in a high-profile ceremony in
A. Definition of commercialization of sports New Delhi in April 2008.
Commercialization is the process of introduction of a new In 2010, the IPL became the first sporting event in the world
product or service in the market. Now-a-days, to be broadcasted live on You Tube. Duff and Phelps, a
commercialization is evident in Education, industry, social multinational consultancy firm estimated the brand value of the
circuit as well as in sports. IPL in 2020 to be ₹458 billion. According to BCCI, the 2015
Commercialization of sports is defined as that aspect of the season of IPL contributed to nearly ₹11.5 billion (equivalent to
sports that involves the purchase, sale, display or use of sport in US$160million) to the GDP of the Indian economy. It is played
such a way that it generates revenue and profit, for making the in the months of April and May and it is the richest tournament
sports better internationally, with world-class infrastructure. in world cricket surpassing the Big Bash League (BBL) of
When India won the Cricket world cup in 1983, the prize Australia. The IPL is recognized by the ICC (International
money was approximately ₹61,37,000 but the prize money in Cricket Council) in their Future Tours Programme (FTP).
2011 world cup was approximately ₹71.66 crores because the Currently, it has become the most-watched cricket league in the
sponsors from all around the world contributed to this huge world. IPL is run by seven-men governing council comprising
amount. This hefty sum of money indicates that cricket has of former Indian players and BCCI officials namely Rajeev
progressed rapidly in the field of commercialization. Shukla, Ajay Shirke, Sourav Ganguly, Anurag Thakur and
Media, sponsors and technology were automatically attracted Anirudh Chaudhary. Lalit Modi introduced the format, prize
to the games after the advent of commercialization. Most of the money, revenue system and squad composition rules of the IPL.
professional players now, receive their maximum share of The Indian Premier League (IPL) has enriched the BCCI and
income from various sponsorship deals. elevated it to the world’s richest cricket board. The IPL has also
With the advent of global Twenty 20 leagues like IPL, paved the way for introducing the contract system of the Indian
Mzansi Super League and KFC Big Bash, media attention, cricketers. Players are given contracts of A, B and C and are
corporate participation and investments have increased given minimum retainship fees, thus securing their career to
manifold. some extent. IPL provides immense employment opportunities
such as the job of cricket columnist, umpires, costume designers
for all teams, police guards to protect the players, etc. The
Table 1
Literature review
Year Serial No. Author Name of the Project Findings
Ravi Bhushan Adding to economic growth in India through To examine the impact of IPL in Indian cricket-
2017 1. commercialization of cricket governance, revenue generation and job security of the
cricketers to some extent.
Subhadeep Dutta Commercialization of sports in India-Pre and To establish sports as a sector in India
2017 2.
post globalization era
Dr. Raj Yadav Commercialization of sports and competitive Growth point of economy by commercialization of sport.
2016 3.
law
Amay Yeravdekar Study of the factors impacting the Sports facilities given at schools or colleges leads to
2015 4.
commercialization of professional sport effective commercialization of sports.
Amber A. Smith, David Exploring the degree of commercialization To provide practitioners of management and interested
2012 5. P. Synowka and John S. associated with sports marketing activities. scholars insights to commercialization of sports through
Clark corporate sponsorship

*Corresponding author: [email protected]

Banik et al. International Journal of Recent Advances in Multidisciplinary Topics, VOL. 3, NO. 8, AUGUST 2022 27

money received by selling the tickets is a large sum. contract in 2021.Dream 11 was the title sponsor in 2021. TATA
group replaced Dream 11 as the title sponsor in 2022.
2. Objectives of the Study
The objectives of the project on “Commercialization of 5. Viewership of IPL
Sports in India” are as follows: The inaugural week of the 2019 edition of the Vivo Indian
a) To know about the economies of the IPL and the Premier League (Vivo IPL) recorded a reach of 283 million
processes of making profits by the teams. viewers, which is 15 per cent higher than last year. Television
b) To know about the methods of associations of the viewership touched 33.1 million average impressions,
teams with the gains. registering a growth of 28 per cent over 2018. This includes
c) To know about the investors and investments behind viewership at home and at out-of-home locations like
the teams. restaurants, sports cafés, pubs, etc. “Reach” refers to the
d) To have an overview of commercialization of cricket number of people who viewed the inaugural week in television
in India through IPL. for at least a minute. Viewership refers to the number of people
e) To find out the socio-economic impact of sports in our watching the IPL at any given time during the live telecast. The
society. tournament is broadcasted in eight languages, namely, English,
f) To find out whether commercialization of sports in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi and
India is a blessing or a curse through proper analysis Malayalam and 24 channels including movie channels on
of data. Sundays. The tournament also saw a significant increase in
g) To know the methods of revenue generation of the female viewership in the first week at 27 per cent, while the
teams of IPL. core sports audience of males registered a growth of 24 per cent.
The IPL has attracted more female viewers than the average
3. Research Methodology televised sporting event in the country, with female audiences
Research methodology is defined as the systematic and accounting for more than 40 per cent share in viewership of the
scientific procedure of data collection, compilation, analysis, tournament in recent years. Kids viewership has also increased
interpretation and implication which is relevant to any business by 41% in 2019 than it was in 2018. On digital media, Star
problem. Secondary data is the data which is collected in second India’s video streaming service Hotstar recorded a reach of over
hand from journals, books, websites, annual records of 300 million viewers, with a peak concurrency of 18.6 million
companies, etc. In our article, we have used secondary data. viewers for the final match between Mumbai Indians and
Chennai Super Kings. Matches are also streamed live on Jio TV
4. Organization of IPL and Airtel TV apps.
The prize money of 2019 IPL was ₹20 crores for the
The IPL is played by ten teams namely Mumbai Indians,
champions, ₹12.5 crores for the runners-up and ₹6.25 crores for
Chennai Super Kings, Kolkata Knight Riders, Royal
the third and fourth-placed teams. It is mandatory as per the IPL
Challengers Bengaluru, Delhi Capitals, Sunrisers Hyderabad,
rules that half of the prize money must be distributed among the
Rajasthan Royals, Punjab Kings, Gujarat Titans and Lucknow
players.
Super Giants
A franchise earns revenue from the following three sources:-
The ways of acquiring a player are:
Ticket sales, sponsorships of that franchise and a portion of
In the auction, signing Indian players, signing uncapped
the broadcasting rights sold by the Board of Control for Cricket
players (those who have not played international match),
in India (BCCI).
through trading between two franchises and signing
replacements for unavailable or injured players. In the trading
6. Tournament Results of IPL
window, a player can only be traded with his consent. The
Table 2
franchise will pay the difference of the old contract price and List of champions and runners-up by year
the new contract price. If the new contract price is more than Year Winners Runners-Up
the old contract price, the difference is shared equally between 2008 Rajasthan Royals Chennai Super Kings
the player and the franchise selling the player. 2009 Deccan Chargers Royal Challengers Bengaluru
2010 Chennai Super Kings Mumbai Indians
From 2008 to 2012, DLF was the title sponsor of IPL who 2011 Chennai Super Kings Royal Challengers Bengaluru
won the bid for ₹200 crore in five seasons. After that, PepsiCo. 2012 Kolkata Knight Riders Chennai Super Kings
became the title sponsor from 2013 to 2015 by buying the 2013 Mumbai Indians Chennai Super Kings
sponsorship rights for ₹79.2 crores per year. PepsiCo signed the 2014 Kolkata Knight Riders Kings Xi Punjab
2015 Mumbai Indians Chennai Super Kings
contract for five years but terminated it after the suspension of 2016 Sunrisers Hyderabad Royal Challengers Bengaluru
Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals from the IPL.VIVO 2017 Mumbai Indians Rising Pune Supergiants
became the title sponsor of IPL for ₹200 crores for 2016 and 2018 Chennai Super Kings Sunrisers Hyderabad
2017. In June 2017, VIVO extended their sponsorship rights for 2019 Mumbai Indians Chennai Super Kings
2020 Mumbai Indians Delhi Capitals
the next five seasons upto 2022 by signing a deal of ₹2,199 2021 Chennai Super Kings Kolkata Knight Riders
crores which surpassed the Barclays Premier League title 2022 Gujarat Titans Rajasthan Royals
sponsorship contract from 2013 to 2016.VIVO terminated its
Banik et al. International Journal of Recent Advances in Multidisciplinary Topics, VOL. 3, NO. 8, AUGUST 2022 28

The table 2 shows the list of champions and runners-up by Bengaluru (US$111.6 million). Rajasthan Royals owned by
year. Emerging Media and UK Tradecorp Ltd. has the lowest initial
From the table, it is clear that Mumbai Indians is the most investment with US$67 million.
successful franchise, having won 5 titles. Chennai Super Kings Gujarat Titans and Lucknow Super Giants started
is the next best team in IPL with 4 title wins, followed by participating in 2022.So there is a huge difference between the
Kolkata Knight Riders (2 title wins) and Deccan Chargers, original cost of these two franchises and the earlier ones which
Rajasthan Royals and Sunrisers Hyderabad (1 title win each). were formed during the year of its inception-2008.
Out of the teams mentioned in the table, Deccan Chargers and From the table and chart, it is clear that Chennai Super Kings,
Rising Pune Supergiants do not exist. inspite of not having the highest initial investment have won the
IPL 3 times because they have bought many good cricketers in
the auctions in limited budget.
The teams in table 4, have played in IPL in earlier seasons
but now they ceased to exist due to financial constraints.

Brand value of Indian Premier League:

Table 5
Brand value of Indian Premier League
Year Brand Value Change
2018 US$5.3 billion
2019 US$5.7 billion 7.55%
2020 US$4.4 billion -22.81%
2021 US$4.7 billion 6.82%
2022 US$4.5 billion -4.26%
Fig. 1.

Analysis: From the above table and chart, we can see that From the table 5 and chart, it is clear that the brand value of
Sunrisers Hyderabad, owned by the Sun TV Network has the IPL has fluctuated in the last five years. It has decreased by
highest initial investment with US$159 million. It is followed 22.81% from 2019 to 2020 mainly due to the ill-effect of
by Mumbai Indians owned by Reliance group and Teesta retail COVID-19 pandemic.
(US$111.9 million) and UB Group’s Royal Challengers
Table 3
Indian Premier League-Original cost of franchises
Team Name City Owners Price
Chennai Super Kings Chennai India Cements US$91 million
Delhi Capitals Delhi GMR Group, JSW Group US$84 million
Kings XI Punjab Mohali Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia (Bombay Dyeing), Mohit Barman (Dabur), Karan Paul (Apeejay US$76 million
Surendera group), The Oberoi Group
Kolkata Knight Riders Kolkata Shah Rukh Khan (Red Chillies Entertainment), Juhi Chawla, Jay Mehta (Mehta Group) US$75.09
million
Mumbai Indians Mumbai Reliance Group, Teesta Retail US$111.9
million
Rajasthan Royals Jaipur Lachlan Murdoch (Emerging Media), Shilpa Shetty, Raj Kundra (UK Tradecorp Ltd.) US$67 million
Royal Challengers Bengaluru UB Group US$111.6
Bengaluru million
Sunrisers Hyderabad Hyderabad Sun TV Network US$159million
Lucknow Super Giants Lucknow RPSG Group US$880 million
Gujarat Titans Ahmedabad CVC Capital US$650 million

Table 4
Team Name City Owners Price
Kochi Tuskers Kerala Kochi Kochi Cricket Private Limited US$333 million
Deccan Chargers Hyderabad Deccan Chronicles Holding Ltd. US$107 million
Pune Warriors India Pune Sahara India Parivar US$370 million

Table 6
Brand values of all the franchises in the last five years
TEAMS 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017
Mumbai Indians ₹2500 crore ₹761 crore ₹809 crore ₹746 crore ₹694 crore
Chennai Super Kings ₹2700 crore ₹611 crore ₹732 crore ₹647 crore N.A.
Kolkata Knight Riders ₹543 crore ₹543 crore ₹629 crore ₹686 crore ₹652 crore
Royal Challengers Bangalore ₹536 crore ₹536 crore ₹595 crore ₹647 crore ₹576 crore
Sunrisers Hyderabad ₹442 crore ₹442 crore ₹483 crore ₹462 crore ₹347 crore
Delhi Capitals ₹370 crore ₹370 crore ₹374 crore ₹343 crore ₹281 crore
Kings XI Punjab ₹318 crore ₹318 crore ₹358 crore ₹343 crore ₹250 crore
Rajasthan Royals ₹249 crore ₹249 crore ₹271 crore ₹284 crore N.A.
Banik et al. International Journal of Recent Advances in Multidisciplinary Topics, VOL. 3, NO. 8, AUGUST 2022 29

originally blossomed from the IPL. Thus the IPL has not only
focused on money but also concentrated in promoting Domestic
and International cricketing talents. Gradually, IPL has became
the medium of team selection in Twenty 20 international
matches.
The fans associated with the IPL were a little subdued after a
recent incident involving bribery of players by the gamblers to
influence their performance. Since then, BCCI have been extra
cautious in this regard. Arrests of bookies and gamblers were
Fig. 2. done by the police in all the states to maintain the ethics and
integrity of the sports. Law is made stricter with punishments
Brand value of franchises of IPL: like life ban from cricket and heavy fines. For instance, S.
The brand values of all the franchises in the last five years Sreesanth was banned for 7 years as he was found guilty of
are given in table 6. match-fixing. The players should learn to respect their sports
and not take it for granted to be their own autonomy. The IPL
has succeeded in enhancing the glamour of the game. Cricket,
courtesy commercialization, has reached astounding heights.
One of the ways to attract more advertisers is to waive the
premium that the BCCI charges from them. Lower ticket prices
and increase in stadium capacities are necessary to attract more
viewers. Lastly, the BCCI should be more transparent and
accurate in its dealings with the team owners.

8. Recommendations to Improve IPL

The primary suggestion should be to ensure that the IPL
matches are exposed to stricter norms. BCCI should ensure that
Fig. 3. cases like the abrupt exit of the Pune team should be avoided in
future. The time is right to make cricket regain its lost glory, but
From the table 6 and the chart, it can be easily said Mumbai that requires the self-introspection of the players and the
Indians have shown robust growth in their brand value from stakeholders in combination with certain measures which are as
2017 to 2019. Though Chennai Super Kings did not participate follows:
in 2017 IPL, their brand values increased in 2018 and 2019 than • The players need to divulge their incomes and assets
that in 2015 due to their impressive performances in both the in details.
seasons. On the other hand, teams like Kolkata Knight Riders, • The political class and lobbyism in cricket should be
and Royal Challengers Bangalore have seen a dip in brand minimized to the maximum extent.
value, despite having big names in their teams. This may be due • The BCCI should compose an IPL Governing
to the drastic fall in their on-field performances. Kings XI Committee which will comprise of impartial persons.
Punjab showed an increase in brand value from the years 2017 • The players should be monitored constantly to
to 2019. Sunrisers Hyderabad and Delhi Capitals showed a demotivate them from taking bribes and match fixing.
consistent appreciation of their respective brand values from the • Use of mobile phones and any other electronic devices
years 2017 to 2019. Another reason of the failures of KKR and of the cricketers and the support staffs should be
RCB were they failed to buy good players in their auctions restricted during the matches as far as practicable.
which caused their downfall in their performance and brand However, in any case, IPL was, and will continue to be the
values. It is to be noted that due to the overall reduction in brand most extravagant cricket league in the world. IPL is sure to
value of IPL in 2020 from 2019, the brand values of all the maintain its strata and entertain its audiences year after year
individual franchises have also reduced. Gujarat Titans and with its money and grand affair.
Lucknow Super Giants’ brand value could not be determined as
they are new teams. References
[1] www.wikipedia.org
7. Conclusion [2] www.iplt20.com
The IPL has fulfilled its objective of selecting talented [3] www.espncricinfo.com
[4] www.cricbuzz.com
players from all over the country to a great extent. Many great [5] www.bcci.tv
players currently playing for India in international matches