- Tuesday, February 25, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE Indian Premier League (IPL) on Tuesday (31) launched a campaign to expand the tournament by seeking bids to include a new team. Organisers of the world’s richest cricket tournament had said that they would increase the participating teams in the tournament from eight to 10 for the 2022 edition, the 15th since its inception in 2008.
However, the IPL’s tender announcement put only one of the two teams up for grabs, AFP reported.
Experts in the sports industry have opined that a backer may have to commit to a $300 million budget to get a franchise onboard and pay the fees up front.
“The governing council of the IPL invites bids to acquire the right to own and operate one of the two new teams proposed to be introduced to take part in the Indian Premier League from the IPL 2022 season, through a tender process,” the IPL said in a statement.
Major Indian groups including the Adani mining and trading conglomerate are said to be waiting to enter.
Candidates have time till October 5 to seek the tender details and a decision could be made the same month. The IPL is yet to reveal when the competition for the second new team would start.
The IPL has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic for the past two years. While the 2020 edition could still be completed at one go in the United Arab Emirates where it was held behind closed doors, the 2021 edition was disrupted midway in May as a devastating second wave of the pandemic wreaked havoc in the country. The remaining games of the tournament will be played back in the UAE between September 19 and October 15.
Expanding the IPL from eight to 10 teams, however, will have its ramifications for the international cricket calendar even though it will create more opportunity for the Indian cricket board to add to its sizeable income from the tournament (more than $100 million a year) by raising fees and media rights.
But adding more matches to the tournament due to expansion of the teams in fray will mean making foreign players commit more time. The International Cricket Council and some other major cricketing nations have expressed concerns that a longer IPL will eat into an already cramped cricket schedule.
Currently, the eight competing teams in the IPL play each other twice and the top four make the playoffs for the final.
According to reports, an expanded tournament will probably see the league getting split into two groups having five teams each and the playoffs and final being held after the group matches. It would increase the total number of games from 60 at the moment to 74.
Among the Indian cities that have been spoken of as likely participants in an expanded IPL are Kochi, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Pune and Ranchi.
In 2011, the IPL featured 10 teams while in the next year, nine were in the fray. There were teams like Gujarat Lions, Kochi Tuskers Kerala, Deccan Chargers, Pune Warriors India and Pune Supergiant that participated in the tournament irregularly and were defunct later.
The IPL’s ambition to become a global leader have been helped by deals like the move made in June by Redbird – an American capital fund which has stakes in the owners of Liverpool football club and the Boston Red Sox baseball side — to buy 15 per cent of the Rajasthan Royals franchise.
