The IPL has never been worth more than it is today. Two franchise sales — Royal Challengers Bengaluru acquired by an Aditya Birla Group-led consortium for USD 1.78 billion and Rajasthan Royals purchased by a US-based Kal Somani-led consortium for USD 1.63 billion — have confirmed that the league’s commercial trajectory remains steeply upward.
Yet for Lalit Modi, those valuations tell only part of the story. The missing piece, in his view, is the revenue that is not being generated — and the contractual promise that is not being kept.
The number at the centre of it all
Speaking to Sportstar, Modi placed a precise figure on what the IPL’s failure to operate a full home-and-away format is costing. “If there were 94 matches today on a home and away basis, ₹118 crore a game, it’s ₹2,400 crore, just the media rights. That’s ₹2,400 crores extra that’s coming to the BCCI,” he said. That ₹2,400 crore — approx. US$258m — represents unrealised media rights revenue alone, money Modi argues is being left on the table every single season.
The arithmetic is straightforward. When the IPL expanded to ten teams in 2022, the plan called for every side to play each other twice — home and away — producing a 90-match league phase and four knockout games, totalling 94 fixtures. The league has continued to operate with 74 matches, falling short by 20 games. “Out of this, ₹1,200 crores would have gone to the 10 teams, each team would have got 120 crores, and the team value should have automatically been higher,” he added — a franchise shortfall of approx. US$129m in total, or approx. US$12.9m per team each season.
A contractual obligation, not a preference
Modi’s critique is not framed as a matter of opinion. He presents it as a legal and commercial breach. “(For) every game, the BCCI gets 50 per cent, and the remaining 50 per cent is distributed to teams. So, teams are now losing out on 20 games. It is by contractual obligation for the fees that they’re paying to provide them home and away,” he told Sportstar.
He was equally direct in questioning why this commitment has not been honoured. “Why are they not playing home and away? There are excuses. It is our contractual obligation. This is a commercial transaction for the teams.” The point Modi keeps returning to is that franchises paid for a product — a full home-and-away schedule — and that product is not being delivered. “The home and away is where the value is. If you don’t have time in your calendar, don’t increase the number of teams. Simple as that. That’s not what we sold. Has everybody signed off on it? I guarantee not,” he said.
A vision altered from the very beginning
Modi also discussed the original plans for the IPL. “That was how it was proposed on September 13, 2007, and the BCCI governing council approved that the IPL was not a subsidiary of the BCCI. It was an independent company,” he told Sportstar.
That independent structure did not survive for long. “I got a lot of backlash… ‘if you want to launch it, it’s going to be this way.’ It was set up with the owner sitting on the board and controlling it like the NFL. I will reveal that constitution one day, but that is actually the fact of what was approved in the Special General Meeting prior to the press conference that I held. Thereafter, it was changed in November or December 2007, in Jaipur, where others got involved and said that this can’t be done,” he said. Faced with the majority against his model, Modi chose pragmatism over principle and moved on.
What could have been — and what still might
The consequences of that structural shift, Modi believes, have compounded over time. “Had the original structure remained, with owners represented on the board and the league controlling its own operations, the IPL would by now have been an ecosystem unto itself. It would have been untouchable by any company of any kind on the planet,” he said. The ambition behind that statement is considerable. “We would be controlling everything and marketing our own product through our own streaming system globally by now,” he added.
Despite those missed opportunities at the governance level, Modi is unequivocal that the IPL’s position in the global cricket economy is unassailable. “Test cricket should always stay; we should dump the ODIs and keep the T20s. Kerry Packer did a great job in reviving the one-dayers, and I salute him, but the time is over for ODIs. Test cricket should move to the day-night format. But I see absolutely no threat to the IPL from any other leagues,” he told Sportstar.
The unfinished business of the IPL’s founding promise
The franchise sales of RCB and RR have given the IPL a fresh wave of commercial momentum, and Modi welcomes that. But for him, the more pressing question right now is whether the BCCI will address a structural gap that has persisted since expansion — one he argues is not a grey area but a clear contractual obligation with a calculable cost. With ₹2,400 crore (approx. US$258m) in potential media rights revenue going unrealised each season and franchise valuations suppressed as a result, the case for restoring the full home-and-away format is, in Modi’s telling, both commercial and contractual.
