Economic Impact of the Indian Premier League

Indian Premier League is round the corner.What are the financial aspects related to it?
A few months down the line Indians would compete with each other to prove their dominance and for this, they’ll take help from the foreigners too. This would take place as a festival of sorts. People will support their states instead of the country. And, we’ll witness a distorted form of the ‘Gentleman’s Game’ in the form of an extravaganza.

Indian Premier League (IPL) which is casually referred to as ‘Cricketainment’ will start by the end of March. And, since it is not just about Cricket but more of entertainment, it will bring with itself some repercussions that are not truly aligned with the spirit of the game. Besides this, the economics of IPL churns in millions and billions of rupees.

BCCI’s Tall Claims in the Past

Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) claimed a few years back that the 2015 season of the IPL contributed around Rs. 11.5 billion to the Indian GDP! This was testified by KPMG Sports Advisory Group which also said in its report that IPL as a tournament creates opportunities such as employment generation across sectors, tourism development and much more.

If the tournament is mapped economically, we know that around 180 to 200 players participate in the tournament who go through an auction process. Usually there are 8 teams (franchises) that bid for the players and matches are played at 13 odd venues. The matches sometimes also witness celebrity performances and due to all this, millions and millions of people are interested to watch IPL. But, does this mean that there’s no downside to the tournament? Not really.

The Devil Alter Ego

You speak of any negativity related to Cricket and you’ll find that it has already happened in IPL. This tournament has produced ghastly match fixing incidents, terrible fights among cricketers on the field, mass level gambling and what not. Whenever the Indian Premier League matches are going on, people can be seen binge watching matches on their phone and speculating the outcomes simultaneously.

It’s not that players take part in the matches organized at various venues and thousands of people witness it live while millions watch it on TV and all transactions revolve around this. Most of the transactions which are unaccounted for include those which take place during gambling. Besides this, Dream 11, Bet 360 and more such platforms make huge money during IPL seasons because lakhs of people try their luck to speculate the results of matches. Is this in tandem with the spirit of the gentleman’s game?

Now You Decide

We have presented both sides of the story of IPL. Entertainment is never an issue and since Indians already love Cricket, a bit of spice in the form of entertainment has made IPL a huge success. Till the extent the tournament is popular among common people and the transactions are happening fair and square, it’s all well.

But, the moment the negative aspects creep in, it’s a problem.So, based on financial aspects only now you need to decide whether you support the Indian Premier League or not.

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