IPL breaking sponsorship records

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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When the Indian Premier League (IPL) launched in 2008, it did so against a backdrop of the same kind of scepticism that greeted The Hundred in the UK last year. For the cricketing purists it represented change, a wicked cocktail of short-form sport and dizzying entertainment that would usher in an era of greater commercialisation of a traditional game.

But from the outset the IPL was unapologetically loud and clear about what it intended to be: a glamorous festival of T20 that promised to bring together the format’s best players in the biggest cricket market in the world.

As it turns out, that has been a pretty straightforward sell for the league’s sponsorship executives over the last 15 years.

Still, though, sell it they have, and last week it was revealed that India’s BCCI will generate more than I₹1,000 crore – or just over US$130 million if my conversion calculator is correct – from central IPL sponsorship revenue for the first time this season.

That headline-friendly milestone was confirmed to InsideSport by Jay Shah, the secretary for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), after Swiggy Instamart claimed the ninth and final IPL sponsorship slot in a deal which itself is reportedly worth just under US$7 million a year.

The growth at the top is also being mirrored at franchise level, where teams are reported to be seeing double-digit growth in sponsorship revenue compared to last year. Some franchises, such as the Delhi Capitals, now have as many as 24 sponsors. Even the Gujarat Titans, who only unveiled their logo in February and played their first ever game on Monday, have been able to rope in 15 partners in the few months since the franchise was acquired in late October.

The fact that a franchise that didn’t exist a year ago can be so attractive to brands is testament to the success of the made-for-television IPL, which was unashamedly created to capitalise on the commercial era of sport. Shifting to a city-based franchise model has garnered greater fan loyalty, while being able to attract the biggest names has added international appeal.

I’d also argue that designing an entire league and set of teams from scratch has perhaps made it easier for sponsors to be integrated within the competition from its inception, a luxury not afforded to leagues that have been around for decades. Indeed, the phrase “another DLF maximum� still echoes around my mind from when commentators were seemingly contractually obliged to shout those words every time a batsman cleared the rope during the earliest iterations of the competition. The messaging is maybe a little more subtle now, but you get my point.