The Indian Premier League began in 2008 with eight franchises and a format borrowed from American sport. Its most consequential decision was not the auction or the salary cap. It was selling television and digital rights separately, and selling them in five-year blocks.
What the money buys
The 2023–27 cycle went for a figure north of five billion dollars, split between a broadcaster and a streaming platform. That sum is not paid for matches. It is paid for a guaranteed number of live hours in a fixed window, which is why the league expands by adding fixtures rather than by adding seasons, and why a two-month tournament now runs closer to ten weeks.
What follows from it
Squad sizes, the impact-player rule, the length of the strategic time-out and the number of teams are all downstream of an advertising inventory. None of them are cricket decisions in origin, though all of them change the cricket.
The counter-argument is that the money has widened the game: domestic players who would once have earned nothing now have careers, and every full member board has copied the model. Both things are true. What is worth being clear about is which one is driving.
