From cricket to capital: how the IPL became a $18.5B industry

The Indian Premier League is no longer being valued like a cricket tournament.

It is being priced like a scarce, cash-generating media franchise with a captive audience, limited supply and growing institutional demand.

That shift became unmistakable in 2026.

Royal Challengers Bengaluru changed hands in a $1.78 billion deal in March, while Rajasthan Royals agreed to a $1.65 billion sale in May, with both transactions awaiting regulatory approvals.

Together, the deals signal how rapidly IPL ownership has evolved from promoter-driven franchise holding into a global contest for premium sports assets.

Why the IPL has become investable

The attraction for private equity, family offices and strategic investors is not hard to see.

According to Houlihan Lokey’s 2025 brand valuation study, the IPL’s business value reached $18.5 billion in 2025, making it the world’s second-most valuable sports league on a per-match basis after the NFL.

It also said the league drew 1.19 billion viewers across digital and TV last year, while its 2023-27 broadcast rights cycle cost $6.2 billion.

In a market where supply is fixed at 10 franchises, those numbers give the league the feel of a scarce media asset rather than a discretionary entertainment bet.

That scarcity matters because IPL teams sit inside a revenue structure that is unusually centralised.

The BCCI pools media rights and league sponsorship income, keeps half and distributes the rest equally to franchises.

That model gives teams a more predictable economic base than many other sports businesses, where revenue can swing more sharply with local market size, on-field performance or stadium economics.

It also helps explain why the IPL has pulled in industrial groups, family offices and private equity firms looking for long-duration exposure to India’s consumer and media growth.

The deal wave is the evidence

The latest wave of interest is not theoretical.

Reuters reported that CVC Capital’s sale of its majority stake in the Gujarat Titans delivered more than 350% in dollar returns in four years and valued the team at $900 million.

That transaction appears to have been a major proof point for later investors, helping establish that IPL franchises can produce both operating profits and meaningful capital gains.

According to people familiar with the deal, CVC’s exit triggered a new round of enquiries from private equity firms in the US and Europe.

That is the bigger market context behind the 2026 deal flow.

A consortium comprising the Aditya Birla Group, Times of India Group, Bolt Ventures and Blackstone agreed to buy Royal Challengers Bengaluru for $1.78 billion.

Another group led by Lakshmi Mittal and Adar Poonawalla had agreed to buy Rajasthan Royals for $1.65 billion, with the transaction pending approvals from the BCCI, the antitrust authority and the IPL Governing Council.

The fact that two such large transactions surfaced in the same season says as much about investor demand as it does about the scarcity premium attached to elite IPL brands.

The real issue is not upside-down, it is control

For all the excitement around valuations, the legal and governance architecture still shapes what an investor can actually do with a franchise.

That is where the most useful caution comes in.

“A significant issue institutional investors may face is the degree of control the Board of Control for Cricket in India (the BCCI) exercises over the franchise and its stakeholders,” Dhruv Nath, Partner at S&R Associates, told Invezz.

Nath said the BCCI’s authority is “broad [and largely discretionary],” adding that investors are effectively “submitting to a private governing body whose rules can evolve rapidly.”

He also noted that IPL franchise agreements are standard-form contracts with “broad termination rights and consent requirements” that can materially affect valuation and exit.

According to Nath, the BCCI’s prior consent is required for ownership transfers and for the creation of security over a franchise, something that could complicate leverage, acquisition financing and downstream collateral structures.

Nath further said the BCCI’s “fit and proper” criteria for potential owners remain “undefined and hence vague,” leaving investors with limited visibility into how future co-investors or transferees may be assessed.

That is what makes the IPL different from many other institutional sports markets.

Investors are not just buying earnings visibility; they are also buying a relationship with a private governing body whose rules can evolve quickly and whose discretion reaches into ownership, financing and operational decisions.

“Investors also need to factor in geopolitical influence on the league,” Nath said, noting that operational decisions, player eligibility and scheduling can be affected in ways “no commercial contract can fully insulate against.”

Nath added that sophisticated investors can mitigate some concerns by engaging with the BCCI early and seeking comfort on ownership and capital structures, but said “meaningful risks” linked to consent rights and geopolitical exposure remain unresolved and must be priced into transactions.

Why the bulls still love the asset class

The bullish case remains strong because the franchise economics continue to look compelling. Siddharth Patel, a managing partner at CVC Capital, told Reuters:

That is the classic private equity thesis in one sentence.

The bet is not only on cricket, but on India’s broader income growth, media consumption, sponsorship expansion and brand monetisation over time.

Patel’s view is reinforced by the scarcity factor. There are only 10 IPL teams, and no obvious route to rapid expansion.

The league’s concentrated revenue model and limited supply of franchises are key reasons private capital is interested.

The logic is simple enough: if the cash flows are relatively visible, the brand is nationally dominant and the number of investable assets is capped, then valuation can compound quickly when sentiment turns, and exits start to clear at higher marks.

Mohit Burman, the Indian businessman who co-owns Punjab Kings, supplied the owner-side validation.

“The asset class has clearly come of age,” he told Reuters.

That line matters because it captures how the conversation has changed inside the league itself.

IPL owners are no longer talking only about fandom, trophies or marquee players. They are talking about returns, capital structure and the institutionalisation of sports ownership.

Burman said that the league can rival US sports on investor returns, which neatly sums up the optimism now surrounding the sector.

What the 2026 sales tell us

The 2026 transactions suggest that IPL ownership is evolving toward a more global and more professional capital structure.

The RCB deal brought together an Indian conglomerate, a media group, a sports investor and Blackstone.

The Rajasthan Royals transaction, meanwhile, brought in Lakshmi Mittal and Adar Poonawalla, and also covered affiliate teams in South Africa and the Caribbean.

That kind of consortium-led ownership is familiar in global sports, where institutional capital often enters through layered structures rather than simple promoter buyouts.

Even so, the market should not overread the trend.

The IPL is not becoming a free-market league overnight. It is becoming a more expensive and more sophisticated one, but still one in which the league authority retains unusually broad influence over transfers, consent and governance.

That is why the sharpest description of the market is not that franchises have become easy investments.

It is that they have become highly sought-after investments whose value depends as much on regulatory discretion as on cash flow.

For investors, that makes the IPL both attractive and incomplete as an institutional asset class.

The upside is clear: rising media economics, global investor interest, scarce supply and a fan base that is both massive and intensely engaged.

The risk is equally clear: league control, approval rights and governance uncertainty can alter the economics of ownership in ways that are difficult to model.

The result is a market that looks increasingly institutional, but not yet fully normalised. And that may be exactly why the money keeps coming.

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