On January 10, 2023, SA20 played its first match at Newlands, Cape Town. Six teams, all owned by IPL franchises, took the field in South Africa’s third attempt at a franchise T20 league in six years. Cricket South Africa’s first attempt, the T20 Global League in 2017, collapsed before a single match was played after CSA could not secure broadcast deals and had to pay $250,000 in deposit refunds plus $180,000 in settlement payments to each of the eight franchise owners. The replacement, the Mzansi Super League, ran two loss-making seasons without a title sponsor or meaningful broadcast deal before COVID-19 finished it off in 2020.
SA20 worked where the others failed because of one structural difference. IPL owners brought Indian investment, Indian operational expertise, and crucially, Indian audiences who were already invested in the parent franchises. MI Cape Town, Sunrisers Eastern Cape, Paarl Royals and the rest were not South African brands trying to build audiences. They were extensions of established Indian cricketing institutions.
This pattern repeats across every successful post-IPL T20 league. The UAE’s ILT20 features teams owned by Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders, and Delhi Capitals. The Caribbean Premier League now has three teams owned by IPL franchises. Even England’s The Hundred attracted $100 million from RPSG Group (Lucknow Super Giants) for the Manchester Originals and $125 million from Sun Group (Sunrisers Hyderabad) for the Northern Superchargers, according to Global Finance Magazine reporting from March 2025. The money, the model, and the audience all trace back to the same source.
Every country launching a T20 league is betting on the same thesis: T20 cricket is entertainment, entertainment travels, and if the IPL can generate $6.2 billion in broadcast rights, surely a fraction of that is available globally. Here is why that thesis mostly does not hold.
The IPL’s Economics Cannot Be Exported
Why the $6.2 Billion Deal Was a One-Country Event
The IPL’s June 2022 broadcast auction produced a number that stunned the sports world. BCCI sold five-year media rights for $6.2 billion, making IPL the second most valuable sports media property on a per-match basis globally, behind only the NFL at $37 million per game. IPL’s per-match value hit $16.8 million. The English Premier League, NBA, and Champions League all trail on this metric.
That number came entirely from two Indian companies bidding against each other. Disney Star paid $3.01 billion for TV rights. Reliance’s Viacom18 paid $3 billion for digital rights. The bidding war reflected India’s streaming wars, not global cricket demand. As Media Partners Asia reported in March 2026, the next cycle (2028-32) is projected to plateau at $5.4 billion total, a 13% per-match decline, because the broadcaster consolidation has already happened. JioHotstar now holds all rights under one platform, eliminating the bidding competition that inflated the previous cycle.
What drives IPL’s broadcast value that no other league can replicate:
- Market size: India has 1.4 billion people with cricket as the dominant sport and religion combined
- Advertiser base: India’s digital advertising market grew at 18% CAGR during the IPL’s peak rights cycle
- Franchise depth: 10 IPL teams, each with city-specific fanbases running decades deep
- Per-match economics: IPL earns approximately â‚ą118 crore per match from broadcast rights alone
The Broadcast Reality for Every Other League
South Africa’s SA20 secured a five-year contract with Sky Sports for UK and Ireland rights, announced in January 2023. That is a real deal, but it generates a fraction of what IPL’s international packages earn. The UAE’s ILT20 has no comparable broadcast infrastructure behind it. Major League Cricket signed regional sub-licenses with YES Network for MI New York matches and NBC Sports Bay Area for San Francisco Unicorns in 2025. These are club-level arrangements, not league-wide deals generating hundreds of millions.
The numbers are stark. IPL generates approximately $1.2 billion per year from broadcasting and sponsorships according to Global Finance Magazine. SA20’s total prize money across all teams in 2024 was $890,000. That is not a comparison error. It is the structural reality of cricket economics outside India.
Revenue gap between T20 leagues (2025 estimates):
- IPL: $1.2 billion annually from broadcast and sponsorships
- ILT20: $15 million estimated total value
- SA20: $12.5 million estimated total value
- Big Bash League (BBL): $10 million estimated total value
- Major League Cricket: $6.9 million estimated total value
- Pakistan Super League: $5.7 million estimated total value
- Caribbean Premier League: $4.6 million estimated total value
Who Actually Makes Money and Why
The IPL Franchise Expansion Model
The leagues that survive are not building independent cricket economies. They are extending the IPL’s existing economy into new geographies. Reliance Industries owns MI Cape Town in SA20, MI Emirates in ILT20, and MI New York in Major League Cricket alongside the Mumbai Indians. RPSG Group (Lucknow Super Giants) owns the Durban franchise in SA20 and Manchester Originals in The Hundred. GMR Group, co-owner of Delhi Capitals, invested $149 million in Hampshire for The Hundred.
These investments make strategic sense for IPL owners because they create talent pipelines, extend brand visibility during IPL’s off-season, and give franchises global touchpoints. But they are not profitable ventures in isolation. They function as marketing arms for the parent IPL brand, funded by profits from the main tournament.
The leagues that genuinely need to be self-sustaining are the ones struggling. Cricket South Africa spent years in financial distress from the T20 Global League failure and the Mzansi Super League’s two loss-making seasons before SA20 arrived with IPL money and made the economics work. The pattern is consistent: IPL money rescues what domestic cricket boards cannot.
What separates sustainable T20 leagues from failures:
- IPL ownership or backing: SA20, ILT20, CPL’s top franchises, MLC all have IPL-connected investors
- Pre-existing broadcast infrastructure: BBL leverages Cricket Australia’s existing TV deals
- Tax advantages: UAE’s tax-free salary structure makes ILT20 a genuine player magnet
- Domestic cricket strength: PSL survives because Pakistan produces elite players without needing foreign stars
- Government or board subsidies: Many leagues run at losses that boards absorb to maintain cricket’s commercial presence
The Player Availability Problem
Every non-IPL league faces the same structural tension. The best players in the world play for their national teams and the IPL. Everything else competes for the remaining availability, which is shrinking as cricket’s international calendar fills up.
The ICC men’s Future Tours Programme is packed. Players from major nations face conflicts between national duties and franchise contracts. The Big Bash League has seen its competitiveness decline as Australian national players increasingly prioritize Test cricket and IPL contracts over the domestic T20 competition. BBL’s standing in the global T20 rankings fell from strong second-tier to fourth, behind both SA20 and ILT20.
The core player availability hierarchy in T20 cricket:
- First priority: National team commitments (enforced by ICC and boards)
- Second priority: IPL (highest-paying league globally, franchise contracts are binding)
- Third priority: Other T20 leagues (negotiate for whatever availability remains)
This hierarchy means newer leagues get whoever is available after the IPL finishes, which is typically not the same player at the same peak condition. Major League Cricket’s 2025 season deliberately moved its opening to early June to reduce overlap with The Hundred, showing how calendar conflicts shape every operational decision for non-IPL leagues.
The Failures Nobody Talks About
South Africa’s Three Attempts in Six Years
Cricket South Africa’s history with T20 franchise leagues is the clearest case study in what goes wrong. The T20 Global League was announced in 2017 as a competitive IPL alternative. Eight franchises were sold, players were auctioned, and then the entire tournament collapsed before it began. CSA had no broadcast deal, no title sponsor, and a financial model that its own acting CEO admitted needed broadcaster money to function. CSA paid R21 million in settlements to the eight franchise owners and owed unpaid fees to auctioned players.
The replacement, the Mzansi Super League, ran in 2018 and 2019 without selling television rights internationally and without a title sponsor. ESPNcricinfo described it as loss-making from the outset. COVID ended it before a third edition could run. When SA20 launched in 2023 with IPL ownership behind all six teams, it was South Africa’s third attempt. The difference was not cricket quality. It was that IPL money replaced the need for a self-sustaining business model.
What killed South Africa’s first two T20 leagues:
- No broadcast deal secured before launch: The T20 Global League had committed to franchises without confirmed TV money
- No title sponsor: MSL ran two seasons without commercial backing substantial enough to sustain the league
- Financial model built on assumptions: CSA assumed broadcaster money would arrive. It did not.
- Loss of player confidence: When players are not paid, word spreads and recruitment collapses in future editions
- No IPL-connected investment: Both leagues were run by CSA without the structural backing that SA20 later benefited from
Major League Cricket’s Governance Crisis
Major League Cricket launched in July 2023 with genuine high-profile investment. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are among investors in the Seattle-based team. GMR Group invested in the league. The 2024 season added regional broadcast deals. The 2025 season expanded to 34 matches. On the surface, MLC looked like cricket’s American frontier story.
Below the surface, a serious governance dispute developed between USA Cricket and American Cricket Enterprises, MLC’s operator. According to Cricexec reporting from August 2025, USA Cricket terminated its relationship with ACE, citing multiple failures: six ICC-standard stadiums promised by 2024 with only Grand Prairie, Texas operational; unpaid player and staff salaries of $606,189 for 2024 and $647,603 for 2025; and a high-performance center promised by 2020 that remained undelivered.
ACE’s exclusivity over all short-form cricket in the US, granted under a 2019 term sheet, was the foundation on which MLC was built. USA Cricket’s termination of that agreement in 2025 introduced structural uncertainty into a league still finding its audience. Cricket in America has approximately $87.5 million in annual market revenue according to Statista’s 2024 projections. The entire US cricket market is a fraction of what IPL generates in a single match.
MLC’s structural challenges in the US market:
- Tiny existing cricket audience: Cricket is not a mainstream sport in the United States
- Stadium deficit: Promised venues were not built on schedule, limiting expansion
- Governance dispute with USA Cricket: Termination of the ACE exclusivity deal created uncertainty
- Calendar competition: Summer scheduling conflicts with Baseball, NFL preseason, and NBA Finals
- Low broadcast value: Regional sub-licensing to local sports networks is not comparable to national broadcast deals
The Olympics Factor: Cricket’s New Wild Card
2028 Los Angeles and What It Could Change
Cricket returns to the Olympics in 2028 in Los Angeles after a 128-year absence, with a T20 format. This is the most significant structural development in global cricket economics since the IPL launched in 2008. Olympic inclusion gives cricket exposure to hundreds of millions of non-cricket viewers across markets the sport has never reached.
The commercial logic for T20 leagues in non-traditional markets shifts with Olympic inclusion. A league in a country fielding an Olympic team gains legitimacy that was previously impossible to claim. The United States, Canada, and dozens of other emerging cricket nations suddenly have a reason to invest in domestic T20 infrastructure that extends beyond pure cricket fanbases.
The European T20 Premier League, featuring teams from Ireland, Scotland, and the Netherlands, launched in July 2025 according to Global Finance Magazine. Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan is among its co-owners. Saudi Arabia hosted an IPL player auction in November 2024, positioning itself as cricket’s next commercial frontier. The Olympic wave is already generating investment in markets that would have been considered commercially irrelevant to cricket two years ago.
What the 2028 Olympics means for T20 league economics:
- Legitimacy for emerging cricket nations: Olympic participation gives non-traditional markets a competitive reason to develop T20 infrastructure
- Broadcaster interest in new markets: Olympic coverage brings cricket to networks that previously had no reason to bid for rights
- Player pathway expansion: Countries that field Olympic teams create clearer incentives for domestic T20 leagues to develop local talent
- Sponsor access: Olympic association opens doors to non-cricket sponsors who have Olympic marketing budgets
The Saudi Arabia Question
Saudi Arabia’s entry into cricket’s commercial landscape follows the pattern of its sports acquisitions strategy. LIV Golf, the Saudi Pro League football investments, the ATP tennis events. Cricket is the next asset class being evaluated. With 1.5 billion Muslims globally, many in cricket-playing nations, and sovereign wealth funds with patience for long-term commercial bets, Saudi Arabia has structural reasons to invest in cricket infrastructure.
Whether a Saudi T20 league would succeed depends entirely on whether it can attract the broadcast deals and player availability that have eluded every league outside India and Australia. The money can buy the infrastructure. It cannot manufacture the audience.
The Bottom Line
The T20 league gold rush is rational from every country’s perspective and structurally flawed from most countries’ economics. The IPL proved that cricket in the right market can generate NFL-scale broadcast revenue. Every board that watched the $6.2 billion June 2022 auction looked at their own market and imagined a version of that number.
The ones that succeed do not replicate the IPL. They extend it. SA20 works because six IPL franchises brought Indian investment, Indian audiences, and Indian operational expertise. ILT20 works because the UAE’s tax-free environment and IPL ownership make it a genuine player destination. The Hundred is being recapitalized by IPL money that views England’s cricket infrastructure as an asset worth owning.
What a T20 league actually needs to survive:
- A broadcast deal before launch, not after: CSA’s T20 Global League proved what happens when you auction franchises without TV money confirmed
- IPL-connected ownership: Not because Indian investment is the only option, but because IPL owners bring operational expertise that took India 15 years to build
- A domestic audience that pays for cricket content: Without subscribers or advertisers behind the broadcast deal, rights values cannot cover operating costs
- Calendar separation from IPL: Leagues that overlap with April-May IPL windows compete for the same players and lose
The countries that will fail are the ones that have announced leagues before solving the broadcast question. Cricket’s history has enough examples to be clear about the pattern. South Africa took three attempts. Every attempt without confirmed broadcast revenue is an expensive way to learn a lesson that CSA already documented in 2017.
The 2028 Olympics and Saudi Arabia’s interest create genuine new scenarios. But the fundamental economics of T20 cricket remain centered on one country. Every league that ignores that fact is not building a cricket economy. It is hoping that the market catches up before the money runs out.
