The Indian Premier League domestic franchise cricket tournament, operated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, is by far the richest sports league in Asia and has plenty of opportunity to continue growing on the sponsorship front.
The league’s commercial clout was made clear in June 2022 when its media rights were sold for $6.2bn (INR48,390 crore in the local currency/£4.4bn/€5.3bn) over five years from 2023 to 2027, representing a higher per-match value domestically than the English Premier League.
In 2024, the IPL’s central sponsorship portfolio was worth $99.4m*, a figure that places it just below the Premier League, albeit with inventory still to sell.
New cycle
The season marked the beginning of the tournament’s new commercial cycle, with 10 sponsorship slots made available to brands. Total revenues of almost $100m were a remarkable achievement given they were drawn from only five sponsors.
The portfolio was underpinned by Tata Group’s enormous $60.2m-per-year renewal for the next five years from 2024 until 2028.
In 2023 the league earned $140.4m from 10 sponsors, but it should be noted this figure included an early termination fee of $30.3m from former title sponsor Vivo.
The Chinese mobile phone maker had agreed a three-year title deal from 2021 to 2023 but exited the contract after the first season, agreeing to pay the BCCI $54.2m to cover the two unused seasons. Removing the Vivo fee, the IPL collected $110.1m from 10 sponsors, meaning in 2024 the IPL earned 90 per cent of the 2023 total from half as many sponsors.
Days before the end of the 2024 season, Wonder Cement joined the central sponsorship stable, paying $6m per annum for the five-year cycle. This means from 2025 the IPL will earn at least $105.4m per year with four more slots still available.
The inflation in the fees commanded by the tournament’s title rights demonstrate its rapid commercial growth. The rights have increased more than eightfold in value since the tournament began in 2008, when Indian real estate firm DLF paid $7.5m per year as title sponsor, compared to Tata Group’s $60.2m per year today.
Other central sponsors have steadily increased their spending over time, with two notable exceptions in highly competitive categories. Fantasy gaming platform My11Circle ousted incumbent Dream11 by paying $15.1m per year, the second-largest IPL sponsorship deal behind Tata and a 129-per-cent increase on Dream11’s previous $6.6m-per-year agreement in the previous cycle.
Similarly, online trading platform Angel One came in as new sponsor for 2024 and is paying $9.9m per year, a 27-per-cent increase on the biggest central sponsorship deal from the previous cycle – RuPay’s $7.8m-per-year deal. Observers told SportBusiness Sponsorship that Angel One’s fee reflects the fierce competition in India’s digital financial trading sector to gain a central IPL sponsorship.
Another key factor in the overall hike in central IPL sponsorship fees is the planned expansion of the IPL. Two new franchises in Lucknow and Ahmedabad entered in 2022 and IPL media rights were sold the same year on a per-match basis on the understanding that the IPL will have 74 matches in 2023 and 2024, rising to 84 in 2025 and 2026, and 94 in 2027.
Team sponsorship
Teams receive the bulk of their sponsorship revenue from the BCCI’s distribution of a portion of central sponsorship income. Around 45 to 50 per cent of league sponsorship revenue is shared between the 10 teams, with the precise percentage granted to each team dependent on their position in the table at the end of each season. The rest goes to the BCCI.
While central revenue is vital, teams are steadily increasing earnings from their own sponsorship inventory. As with most sports teams, a variety of factors impact the revenue an IPL franchise is able to earn. Teams in larger, more developed cities generally enjoy some advantages, while on-field success and the presence of star players also factor into their appeal for brands.
SportBusiness Sponsorship understands that Mumbai Indians, one of the highest-earning teams in the competition, has a sponsorship portfolio worth around $14m per annum, while the smallest sides earn closer to $8m. Overall, the IPL team sponsorship market is estimated to be worth between $90m and $100m, which is comparable to the sum generated by league sponsors.
Multiple sources told SportBusiness Sponsorship that while league-level sponsorship income continues to increase significantly, the team sponsorship market is the area with the most headroom for growth.
Even the most successful IPL teams earn relatively modest revenues from sponsorship compared to their counterparts in other leagues. But as the IPL grows, observers say franchises will become more embedded in their communities – in the manner of European football clubs – and draw larger and more loyal fanbases, which will lead to bigger sponsorship deals.
As it stands, a good barometer of the disparity between the sponsorship portfolios of IPL teams is their front-of-shirt deals. Mumbai Indians has the most lucrative agreement in the league with its $4.4m-per-year deal with Indian fintech firm Slice, followed by Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB) agreement with Qatar Airways, worth $3m per year.
The two shirt deals highlight the web of factors driving the value of team sponsorships. Both Mumbai and Bengaluru are two of India’s biggest economic centres, but while Mumbai Indians has won the IPL a joint-record five times, RCB has never won the tournament. The team does, however, have Virat Kohli, arguably the most famous and most marketable Indian sports star globally.
Sunrisers Hyderabad and Punjab Kings’ shirt agreements are worth the least at $2.3m per annum, despite Sunrisers winning the IPL in 2016. All IPL teams increased the value of their front-of-shirt sponsorships by an average of 14 per cent from 2022 to 2024, excluding Mumbai Indians and Lucknow Super Giants as they have not changed shirt sponsors in that time.
Interest from sponsors is increasing in the so-called ‘tier-two’ Indian cities that are experiencing growing populations combined with a rising middle class.
Brand churn
While the IPL has a five-year commercial framework, sponsors have tended to come and go during previous cycles.
The title sponsorship rights have changed hands six times since the IPL started in 2008. Pepsi ended a five-year agreement after three years in 2015, while Vivo signed a five-year term in 2018 that was curtailed after two seasons, before returning in 2021 on a three-year deal that ended after a year and included an early termination fee.
The same has occurred in other central sponsorship deals. In 2022, for example, food delivery firm Swiggy Instamart, Saudi oil company Aramco, tourism authority Visit Saudi, and online trading firm Upstox all joined the IPL’s central portfolio mid-cycle. But none of these brands continued into the new commercial cycle in 2024.
Many of the sponsors to have exited over the last few years have been from the Indian start-up technology sector. In some cases, the brands were spending investor money in an attempt to rapidly grow brand awareness and their user bases.
But with India’s tech industry cooling off in the past two years, the IPL has experienced a significant churn of central sponsors, and observers say the BCCI is prioritising stability in its portfolio and being more circumspect about the brands it decides to partner with, hence the smaller portfolio at the start of its 2024 to 2028 commercial cycle.
Two other notable sponsor exits are the Saudi brands, Aramco and Visit Saudi. Sources told SportBusiness Sponsorship that India remains a key priority for Saudi Arabia and that it is likely brands such as Aramco will return to sponsoring the cricket league at some point.
IPL teams also experience a high turnover of sponsors, particularly in
lower-tier deals that only include digital assets. Brands often acquire these rights for season-long awareness campaigns alone.
Multi-team deals
A handful of brands opt for a multi-team sponsorship strategy as an alternative to central sponsorship because it can offer both a consistent presence and the opportunity to target specific regions of interest.
The strategy has primarily been adopted by large brands from traditional industries that have long been involved in sport sponsorship. Reliance-owned telco Jio is the only brand to sponsor all 10 IPL teams at annual value of around $7.2m, taking the sleeve asset in each deal.
Agricultural tyre manufacturer BKT Tires, which has a host of sponsorship agreements outside India, is the back-of-shirt sponsor of six IPL teams at a cost of $5.4m per annum and has one lower-tier deal. Indian building materials firm Astral Pipes has agreements with five IPL teams worth almost $2.6m per year in total.
The multi-team approach has also attracted some newer Indian brands. Having lost its central sponsorship berth, Dream11 has agreed eight team deals, with four front-of-shirt sponsorships for a total of $9.6m per annum and four lower-tier agreements. Insurer Acko had six deals in 2022 but reduced that to three in 2024 for a total of $1.4m per year.
Multi-team sponsorship used to be considered a cheaper option than a central deal, but most of the brands pursuing the strategy are now spending comparable sums to central sponsors, highlighting the increasing value of team deals.
Active sectors
While the surge of Indian tech brands sponsoring the IPL has slowed, other sectors have come to the fore.
The most notable new category is solar energy. While just one brand from the industry sponsored a team in the 2023 edition of the IPL, six of the 10 franchises have a solar energy sponsor this year and all of these deals include kit inventory.
The Rajasthan Royals’ front-of-shirt deal with Luminous was the first solar energy deal in 2023, worth $2.4m per year. In one year, total investment from the sector has almost doubled to around $4.7m, with five brands now sponsoring IPL teams.
The sudden increase in interest is largely due to the introduction of the Indian government’s ambitious net-zero strategy, which has led states to offer subsidies for consumers to install solar panels at home.
According to the Central Electricity Authority of India, in 2022 solar energy accounted for seven per cent of the Indian energy market. The government is seeking to increase this to 17 per cent by 2027 and 25 per cent by 2032.
This has led to a huge proliferation of solar energy companies. Commercial and residential solar demand is booming across India, creating significant competition in a burgeoning sector very quickly.
One area of IPL sponsorship observers says is ripe for growth is the kit supply market. Few global brands have entered into IPL team kit deals – Adidas previously held a deal with Mumbai Indians – in part because merchandise sales have been slow in India for many years.
But with IPL teams growing in popularity and connecting more with fans, sales are increasing. Puma has been the kit supplier for RCB since 2021, but this year agreed a second deal with Delhi Capitals, while Skechers became the kit supplier to Mumbai Indians.
It is understood that the advent of the Women’s Premier League and other franchise T20 competitions could also be encouraging global sportswear brands to consider entering the IPL kit supply market.
Previously, there was a relatively short playing window of around two months for IPL franchises, but with the majority of franchises now adding teams in leagues such as the WPL, ILT20, SA20 and the Caribbean Premier League to their portfolios, teams are now able to offer more of a year-round proposition.
*All deals converted to US dollars for ease of comparison with the other leagues in this report. Fees are taken from SportBusiness Sponsorship’s Deals Tracker database which uses prevailing exchange rate at the time the deal was announced.
