Last Updated on 1 year by Charbel Coorey

Ashes rivalry is as alive as ever after an all-time classic Test at Edgbaston, but when it comes to cricket’s economics, India hold the aces

Article credit: The Conversation

What an exciting end to the first Test of the 2023 Ashes with the Aussie grit of Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon just defeating England’s Bazball style of play. It sets the scene for an exciting Ashes series overall with Lord’s hosting the next test.

It comes just a week after Australia won the World Test Cricket championship, defeating India in comprehensive style at The Oval in south London.

The Ashes always excites the traditionalists, as the Australia-England rivalry is the oldest in cricket.

But while playing the old enemy for the Ashes is for many the pinnacle of Australian cricket, Australia-India is developing as a modern rivalry.

This is significant because when it comes to the economics or business of cricket, it’s India that’s in the box seat, not England.

Indian Premier League (IPL) as a cricketing powerhouse

The 2023 season of the Indian Premier League drew more than 500 million viewers, a 32% growth in television ratings on last season. The very first IPL game of the 2023 season in fact attracted more viewers than the Super Bowl the climax of the NFL’s American football season and one of the biggest dates on the world sporting calendar.  The first IPL match attracted 130 million viewers compared to 113 million for the Superbowl.

What’s more, 2023 IPL champions the Chennai Super Kings are valued at about US$900 million (A$1.3 billion), and have been touted as the “Manchester United of the IPL”.

It just shows the power of sport in today’s global economy, and the power of India in global cricket. Indeed, sport is no longer about small talk, but an intrinsic part of the global economy and geopolitics.

When T20 took off in England and spread to the cricket playing nations, everyone thought Test Cricket would die. But it didn’t. In fact, it is stronger than ever as we can see from the popularity of the Ashes and the India-Australia series. If anything, it’s the game in between T20 and Test cricket, the 50-over game that is likely to become obsolete. The ODI World Cup is played every four years as the showpiece event, but is now arguably overshadowed by the regularity of the T20 World Cup.

So how exactly did India and the IPL become the cricket powerhouse?

The IPL was formed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) after India’s victory in the 2007 World Cup, after a breakaway league had been mooted to break the BCCI’s grip on the game. The BCCI acted fast to surf the T20 wave and according to the BCCI Vice President Lalit Modi at the time, it was “designed to entice an entirely new generation of sports fans into the grounds throughout the country. The dynamic Twenty20 format has been designed to attract a young fan base, including women and children.”

So why did this happen in India?

It’s partly size, with India now the largest country in the world with 1.4 billion people, and India’s economic success in recent decades with a growing middle class. By 2025 the Indian middle class will number 583 million people, or 41 percent of India’s projected population.

This has been super-charged by the digitisation of the Indian economy with TVs and smart phones giving the average Indian cricket lover access to their favourite teams. The IPL has attracted the top cricketers from around the world and also boosted women’s cricket (especially their pay packets) with the Women’s Premier League in India too.

“designed to entice an entirely new generation of sports fans into the grounds throughout the country. The dynamic Twenty20 format has been designed to attract a young fan base, including women and children.”

Lalit Modi

The rise of the IPL has been endorsed by surveys on the fans themselves on the future of cricket

For example, a survey by Cricblog of 1,000+ fans showed that 68% of respondents believe IPL franchises will soon hold more power over national boards. Also, 52.4% of respondents said they would drop One Day Internationals (ODIs) to reduce scheduling pressures that have come about from the rise of T20 cricket.

However, despite the shift to T20s, like the successful IPL, over 90% believe Tests will still be around in the next 10-15 years, with the success of the Ashes crucial to Test cricket’s survival.

The role of IPL and Tests came up for discussion when I was in India last month hosting the “Cricket, Collaboration and Commonwealth” conference for the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in New Delhi. There was a robust discussion on the economics of the India Premier League (IPL) and the role of “cricket diplomacy” in Australia-India relations.

While I was in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Australia speaking to packed houses of India diaspora in Sydney. Modi was supposed to be coming for the Quad meeting in Sydney, but after US President Joe Biden cancelled due to the debt ceiling crisis in Washington, he decided to come anyway.

Modi wanted to build on the momentum of the blossoming India-Australia partnership, after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited India in March. Cricket diplomacy was on display then too, spawning now famous images of Prime Ministers Modi and Albanese on a chariot before the fourth Test match in Ahmedabad.

Around 50% of Indians are under the age of 25 so there are immense opportunities for Australian education. Only 21% of Indians have higher education and India wants to double the number of university places to 35 million by 2035 providing a great opportunity for Australian universities and TAFEs.

This is important because India is aspirational – young middle-class Indians have seen the world progress with globalisation, and they want to be part of the action and lead the way.

However, in cricket terms, the excitement of the IPL was there to see, but the large attendances at The Oval for the ICC World Championship Test (with Indian fans outnumbering Australians by almost the size of our relative populations!) and now the exciting Ashes series shows that the death of Test cricket had been greatly exaggerated.

*Tim Harcourt is Industry Professor and Chief Economist at IPPG at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and host of The Airport Economist www.theairporteconomist.com and Footynomics – The Economics of Sport www.footynomics.com.au

Thinking of a career in Sports Management? Check out the UTS course here: https://www.uts.edu.au/study/find-a-course/master-sport-management#course-overview

For the results of the survey of the future of cricket by the fans themselves see: What does the future of cricket look like according to fans? – CricBlog