Women’s IPL: The new big shot in sports: Women’s IPL

One thing about the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is that beyond its remit to support, encourage and spread the sport, it is pragmatic enough to value return on investments. So, while it has done much for women‘s cricket since the Women’s Cricket Association of India merged with BCCI in 2007, it is with a confirmed RoI that the regulatory body formally gave its go-ahead on Tuesday to a Women’s Indian Premier League (WIPL) tournament starting 2023. The timing could not have been better. Last week, the women’s team won the Asia Cup for the seventh time. It won the T20 cricket silver at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in August, and, perhaps most importantly, beat England in England in the three-match ODI series in September.

But the proof of the pudding lies in the viewer-connect, which translates into media rights and revenues, which again gets ploughed into the game and its viewing itself. Apart from the fact that the likes of Mithali Raj, Harmanpreet Kaur, Poonam Yadav and now-retired international Jhulan Goswami are household names, the women’s game is a brand on the run. While the men’s game has, for all purposes, reached a viewers’ ceiling – new auction categories and market segmentation in the last IPL auction in June attesting to a maximisation strategy – the women’s arena is reaching newer spectators, newer popularity heights. The record 1.64 billion engagements generated by the 2022 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in March-April in New Zealand – up from 82 million in 2020 – along with a global TV audience of 104.8 million, underlines this steep curve.

BCCI has, till now, only made a formal announcement. Details of the number of franchises (probably 5-6, for starters), format, schedule, distribution, etc, await. Because of WIPL being a brand of the existing IPL brand, the wheel won’t have to be reinvented. Demand from team owners for players, with the contract system already in place, should be on tap. The horse of women’s cricket, placed before the WIPL cart, is raring to go. All it needs now is to gallop.