How the Indian Premier League became a 800-pound gorilla of sports

The second decade of the Indian Premier League (IPL), which gets underway from April 7, will see more money accruing to the tournament, that is sometimes referred to as bikini cricket.After a decline of 5.55 per cent in viewership in 2016, vis-a-vis viewership in 2015, the viewership for the Indian Premier League (IPL) last year saw an annual increase of nearly 14 per cent.

While IPL still gets a majority of its eyeballs in the cities, villages have been playing catch-up and closing the gap with urban tele-watchers of IPL - rural viewership has gone up from 39 per cent in 2016 to nearly 47 per cent last year.

Digital viewership too has nearly quadrupled in the last four years, touching the 100 million mark after Hotstar won the rights for digital broadcast three years back.

Among the biggest beneficiaries of IPL has been the broadcaster, Sony, which paid Rs 4,104 crore for the 10 years broadcast rights, which ended last year - more than half of that amount was recovered in just the last two editions of IPL.

For the digital broadcaster Hotstar though, IPL, while it has generated the moolah, hasn't quite helped it recover the Rs 302.20 crore it spent for the three year broadcast rights that ended last year - leaving it with a loss of nearly Rs 93 crore.

With new deals coming into effect from April 1 this year, IPL will see substantial earnings of more than Rs 3,700 crore each year for the next five years, till 2022.