IPL beyond a boundary

Its structure and ambit could gain from tweaks

The Indian Premier League (IPL), which has just ended with expected eye-catching bids for various broadcasting rights, is an acknowledged success as a sporting business proposition. Yet in its structure and ambit, the IPL has the potential to go much further in improving its governance and influence within the domestic cricketing eco-system. One issue concerns the ownership of the IPL, which rests exclusively with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Though there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, a monopolistic structure limits the scope for transparent administration. It contrasts sharply with, say, the English Premier League (EPL), which is wholly owned by the 20 clubs that make up that league in each season, or Major League Baseball, which operates through a “constitution” agreed by participating teams. This structure allows the competing teams to have a significant say in the way the tournament is run, including broadcasting rights agreements.

Though the BCCI and IPL teams do confabulate, it is neither a formal nor transparent mechanism, raising risks of conflict of interest. This could well become an issue in the upcoming IPL edition since the holder of the digital broadcasting rights also owns a competing team. In 1999, the British Department of Trade and Industry blocked EPL broadcasting rights holder Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB’s bid for Manchester United on the recommendations of the Competition Commission. This was done principally on grounds that owning a prized EPL club would give the broadcaster greater bargaining power in negotiating its television contract. The BCCI would do well to include an exclusionary clause for just such a contingency to improve its reputation for probity. It had already faced serious reputation flak in 2015, when it allowed its president, N Srinivasan, to own Chennai Super Kings until the Supreme Court intervened.

It is also a pity that the IPL, for all its super-success, operates largely outside the mainstream domestic cricketing eco-system. The 10 teams compete against one another in a closed system with no scope for promotion or relegation from lower leagues, which limits the nature of competition to one prize. In European football, there are multiple goals to which a team and its supporters can aspire, apart from winning the league — qualifying for regional tournaments, for instance, or promotion from a lower league. All of these exponentially expand the ambit of those competitions. The IPL — and Indian cricket — would gain significantly if the BCCI were to spend some of its considerable earnings to create at least one more lower T20 league, instituting a system of promotion and relegation, and distributing broadcast revenues to teams on the basis of their rankings. That would add a new element of excitement to a tournament where viewer interest noticeably flagged in the early part of the recently concluded season, principally, analysts say, on account of the extended duration and the fact that several match-ups ended up being of no consequence. Few will deny that the IPL has had a salutary impact on the sport in India by significantly expanding the universe for cricketing talent and reviving waning interest in the longer versions of the game. But it could do much more to be truly meaningful for the sport.