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Stream/Area:
-
Subject:
-
Paper ID:
IJSREM66449
Volume:
10 |
7 |
Jul 2026
Pages:
1-13
Publication Frequency:
Monthly (12 issues per year)
License:International Journal of Scientific Research in Engineering and Management follows the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) License, allowing free use and distribution with proper attribution.
School of Management & Commerce
Sapthagiri NPS University, Hesaraghatta Main Road, Bengaluru.
School of Management & Commerce
Sapthagiri NPS University, Hesaraghatta Main Road, Bengaluru.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) has grown into one of the most commercially valuable sports properties in the world, amore than five-fold increase since the league's inaugural rights deal in 2008 (Press Trust of India, 2022). As franchises increasingly operate as standalone commercial entities, understanding the structure and drivers of their revenue and profitability has become an important question for sports-business research. This study analyses the revenue generation and profitability of selected IPL franchises —MI, CSK, RCB — using a business-analytics approach. Because Chennai Super Kings Cricket Limited is the only IPL franchise with publicly disclosed, audited financial statements, its results (revenue of ₹676.40 crore and net profit of ₹229.10 crore in FY2024, up from ₹292.34 crore and ₹52.17 crore respectively in FY2023) are used as a verifiable case study, supplemented by Brand Finance and Houlihan Lokey brand-valuation data for cross-franchise comparison. Secondary data were collected from BCCI media-rights disclosures, CSK Cricket Limited's statutory annual report, Brand Finance's IPL valuation reports (2024 and 2025), and peer-reviewed sports-analytics journals. Microsoft Excel and Power BI-style dashboarding were used to visualise revenue trends, franchise brand-value comparisons, and revenue-stream composition, while descriptive and comparative statistical techniques were applied to interpret year-on-year movements. Findings indicate that central media-rights distribution remains the single largest and fastest-growing component of franchise revenue, that on-field performance has a measurable but lagged effect on brand valuation, and that valuation estimates differ materially across methodologies — a gap this study addresses directly by comparing Brand Finance's royalty-relief approach with Houlihan Lokey's revenue-multiple approach. The study concludes with recommendations for revenue diversification, analytics-led decision-making, and improved financial-disclosure practices across the league.
KEYWORDS
This study set out to analyse the revenue generation and profitability of selected IPL franchises — Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, and Royal Challengers Bengaluru — using verifiable secondary data and business-analytics techniques. The analysis confirms that central BCCI media-rights distribution, now valued at ₹48,390 crore for the 2023–2027 cycle, remains the dominant driver of franchise revenue, and that this central-pool growth is directly visible in CSK Cricket Limited's audited results, where FY2024 revenue and profit grew 131.4 per cent and 340 per cent respectively over the prior year (DT Next Bureau, 2024). The study also shows that franchise brand valuation is not a single, objective figure: Brand Finance and Houlihan Lokey, using royalty-relief and revenue-multiple methodologies respectively, produced estimates for the same three franchises in 2025 that differed by roughly two-fold, and even disagreed on which franchise was most valuable. This finding, examined in detail in Chapter 4, extends the methodological caution raised in the literature review (Bhargava, 2025; Dixit, 2023) and suggests that brand-value figures should always be read alongside their underlying methodology rather than treated as directly comparable across providers. On-field performance was found to influence commercial outcomes, but unevenly and sometimes with a lag: CSK's weak 2025 season corresponded with the steepest brand-value decline among the three sampled franchises, while RCB's first title in 17 years was associated with a brand-value increase under one methodology but not uniformly across both. Sponsorship and digital-advertising revenue, meanwhile, continued to grow through the 2025 season even as ecosystem-level brand value declined, indicating that in-season commercial revenue and longer-horizon brand equity should be monitored as related but distinct indicators of franchise health. Overall, the study demonstrates the practical value of combining verifiable financial disclosure (via CSK), named industry valuation data, and dashboard-based business analytics to build a more grounded picture of IPL franchise economics than brand-value headlines alone can provide — while also making clear the data-availability constraints that limit how far such conclusions can be generalised across all ten franchises.
1. 1. Arthnova. (2026, January 3). IPL broadcasting rights: ₹48,390 crore deal, digital beats TV first time. https://arthnova.com/ipl-broadcasting-rights-48390-crore-disney-viacom18/ 2. Bhargava, A. (2025). League design, competitive balance, and economics: A comparative study of IPL and MLB. International Journal of Social Science Research and Review, 8(10), 262–280. https://doi.org/10.47814/ijssrr.v8i10.2917 3. Board of Control for Cricket in India. (2023). IPL 2023 boosts BCCI’s surplus to Rs 5,120 crore. https://www.bcci.tv/articles/2023/ipl-2023-bcci-surplus-5120-crore 4. Brand Finance. (2025, December 9). IPL 2025 remains steadfast under volatile geopolitical climate [Press release]. https://brandfinance.com/press-releases/ipl-2025-remains-steadfast-under-volatile-geopolitical-climate 5. Chittibabu, V., & Sundararaman, M. (2023). Base price determination for IPL mega auctions: A player performance-based approach. Journal of Sports Analytics, 9(2), 77–97. https://doi.org/10.3233/JSA-220633 6. Dixit, P. V. (2023). The Indian Premier League (IPL) and its transformative impact on Indian cricket: A comprehensive review of available literature. Journal of Survey in Fisheries Sciences, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.53555/sfs.v10i1.1627 7. DT Next Bureau. (2024, September 5). Chennai Super Kings Cricket Ltd records 340% jump in net profit at Rs 229 cr. DT Next. https://www.dtnext.in/news/business/chennai-super-kings-cricket-ltd-records-340-jump-in-net-profit-at-rs-229-cr-802447 8. Houlihan Lokey. (2023). IPL Valuation Study 2023: Brand valuation of IPL and franchisees. https://hl.com/media/lnrhmx1y/ipl-valuation-study-2023.pdf 9. Insider Sport. (2025, July 14). IPL brand value hits $3.9bn as franchises eye global sports investor play. https://insidersport.com/2025/07/14/ipl-brand-value-hits-3-9bn-as-franchises-eye-global-sports-investor-play/ 10. Malhotra, G. (2022). A comprehensive approach to predict auction prices and economic value creation of cricketers in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Journal of Sports Analytics, 8(3), 149–170. https://doi.org/10.3233/JSA-200580
Publication Date
9/4/2026
Peer Review Type
Double-Blind Peer Review
Review Rounds: 2
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