IPL 2020 Auction | Star broadcast deal allows IPL franchises to spend lavishly, asserts Harsha Bhogle

The IPL is arguably one of the best and the most viewed T20 franchise tournament in the world and thus it gets viewership from all over the world. For the first eleven seasons, Sony had a deal to broadcast IPL but with the IPL growing enormously, Star swooped in with a broadcast deal that changed the dynamics of the IPL economy. Harsha Bhogle in an auction special chat show on Cricbuzz threw more light on how television rights have helped increase the kitty of the franchises.

"The whole process of IPL has changed and the economy of IPL has changed. Because of the new television deal, the old deal with Sony was the first INR 900 million for one year then it became INR 1.6 billion for ten years while Star's deal is INR 2.5 billion for five years," Bhogle stated. 

"So even though the share of each franchise has gone down, the gross amount that each franchise gets is so much more that the INR 85 crores that you are allowed, you are happy to spend those because earlier what you saved contributed to your profits," he further added.

Earlier, the franchises had to pay franchise fees to the BCCI but now that too has been closed down and the profit that the franchisees get from the television rights has almost doubled. Bhogle believes that crowd engagement has a lot to do in this and says that with more viewers the franchises do not have to think a lot about saving their money and can splash the cash on the players they want.

But now your profits are so large anyway that you need not save too much on that 85 and that is why you are getting these higher prices coming up because each franchise is getting more money out of the television rights. Why are they getting more money out of television rights? because ladies and gentlemen, all of you are watching and there is a lot of advertising money coming in," Bhogle concluded.