The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a festival season in India. Ever since its inception way back in 2008, IPL enjoys the focus of cricketing fraternity during every Indian summer. Every player dreams to play it in once and several has confessed that they can even pay money just to play in it. Thus, one can imagine the magnitude of IPL around the cricketing world.
The cash-rich league earns a big bundle of profit to its governing body BCCI. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) sold its broadcasting rights to Star Sports for a whopping $2.55 billion for five years, which is five times to the last deal with Sony India.
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In 2017 only, mobile manufacturers VIVO had retained the IPL title sponsorship for the next five years with a whopping deal of Rs 2199 crore, a mammoth 554 percent more than the previous contract. The way the other companies have wanted to get associated with the league has more or less made it clear that no other T20 league in this world is bigger than IPL.
Recently, there were rumors that the International Cricket Council (ICC) is eyeing to get their hold on IPL. Though, the Chief Executive of ICC rejected such rumors and said the main motto of ICC is to ensure other T20 leagues across the globe operate within a consistent framework.
“We are fortunate to have some outstanding T20 leagues, including the IPL, which set the gold standard for operations globally and this working group (of ICC) has taken into account those standards when developing the draft set of regulations. Our primary objective is to ensure that other leagues around the world put in place the same minimum criteria and operate within a consistent framework,” Richardson said in a statement.
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“That is not the case. As the chief executives’ committee and the ICC board were advised over the past few days, the development of the regulations has been led by the working group, on behalf of its members, to ensure the long-term health and reputation of the sport internationally and domestically,” he added while responding to the rumors as per reports in India TV.
Richardson once again reiterated the function of the ICC’s working group that was formed last year to consider sanctioning of events and player release. “The primary purpose of the group was to address members’ concerns regarding the proliferation of T20s and other short-form leagues around the world. These have created challenges to and conflicts with the international playing calendar and often rely on a disproportionate number of international players,” Richardson said.
The upcoming season of IPL will kick off from March 23 in Chennai with the opening match will be between defending champion Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore.
