When the legendary Arthur Morris, key member of Don Bradman?s invincible team of the 1940s, was asked what he got out of playing cricket, his answer was startling. Morris negotiated the question with a single-word retort, ?Poverty.? With the onset of a cricketing revolution courtesy the Indian Premier League, starting today, contemporary cricketers will have a radically different answer to a similar question. Most, it can be conjectured, will suggest with a welcome smile, ?We became millionaires.?
One billion dollars in TV rights for a 10 year period, 12,700 advertisement slots on Sony for the 59 games between April 18 and June 1, most of which are sold, hitherto unthinkable players earnings, $3 million in prize money, $5 million for title sponsorship rights for five years, and possibilities of a full house in more than half the venues, what the IPL drives home is that the nerve centre of cricket has firmly shifted to the subcontinent.
There?s little doubt that April 18, 2008, will go down in cricket history as the date when cricket changed forever. If the IPL fails to deliver, possible if its economics go haywire, it will have proved beyond doubt that cricket sans nationalism is not a lucrative market proposition. If it succeeds, however, it will have transformed the once village sport everlastingly.
Modelled on Major League Baseball and the National Football League, IPL comes at a time when the Indian economy has opened itself to global riches and the big corporates trying to make India their home are in search of lucrative investment platforms across the country. IPL, for many, is the ideal answer. At one go, it gives them a foothold in a market of a billion plus and generates eyeballs that millions spent on ads won?t get.
Add to the above the fact that for a billion plus cricket fans, filling stadiums should hardly prove difficult with proper marketing and hype. With celebrity owners like Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta doing their bit in earnest, fans have more than cricket on offer for a couple of hundred rupees. A great evening out at a reasonable price. And with fans thronging the ground or picking their seat in front of the TV set, sponsors will queue up and pay millions for a 10-second slot on Set Max, on instadia hoardings or on team apparel.
Finally, what IPL has going for itself is that all of its franchise owners have deep pockets. Most know that profits can hardly be dreamt of in the short term. While some like Vijay Mallya and Mukesh Ambani are in it for brand benefits to begin with, Shah Rukh Khan has already declared that he expects profits only in the long run.
And this is where the economics of what appears a faultless business proposition can go wrong. We now know that top honchos of the ECB will all be in attendance at Bangalore to note down key points for their own version of IPL a year down the line. Competition is in the offing and will dilute the quality of cricket on offer. Unless cricket expands its base to newer shores, quality players will become rare commodities if competition opens up in the UK in 2010. And what will determine the longevity of IPL is the quality of cricket on offer.
Will Ponting and Symonds, for example, play with equal intensity that they do when wearing the baggy green? Does money equal nationalism as a rallying force? Or will the Australians and English continue to choose India after the ECB is successful in brokering a lucrative broadcast deal of its own in 2010?
Another stumbling block that threatens the economic success of IPL in the short term is the ICC?s unwillingness to carve out a window for the tournament in its Future Tours Programme. With the Australians, South Africans, West Indians and New Zealanders all gone a few weeks into the competition, the star value of the teams will certainly have diminished midway. With dates for the 2009 competition clashing with multiple bilateral series, it will be of interest to note who holds nerve in the long run, the ICC or the IPL governing council. The one time the ICC clashed with innovative private entrepreneurship in the 1970s, it was humiliated at the hands of Kerry Packer. If the IPL humiliates it again, control of the game?s most lucrative version may well slip from the ICC?s hands. Alternatively, the IPL could end up as just another domestic competition.
For the time being at least, the IPL is that unique tournament that inspires English players to revolt against their own board, and for which Australian cricketers contemplate giving up the coveted baggy green cap. India is, all of a sudden, thanks to IPL, the most coveted land to visit.
Boria Majumdar, from La Trobe University, is joint general editor, Sport in the Global Society, Routledge