IPL Will Be No.1 Sports Property In The World: Lalit Modi

Days after the BCCI bagged a whopping amount of over Rs 48,000 crore for the Indian Premier League (IPL) media rights for the 2023-27 cycle, former IPL chairman Lalit Modi, in an exclusive interview to NDTV, said the IPL will become the No. 1 sports league in the world. The former chairman of the franchise cricket league added that he believes that IPL media rights valuation will double again in the next cycle.

Here's an excerpt of his full interview.

Rica: This week, the BCCI hit a jackpot. the IPL media rights were sold for an astronomical sum of 48,000 crore. the billion dollar baby (IPL) is a billion dollar teen now. how would you describe the evolution?

Lalit Modi: it was always going to be lucrative, but viewership is the most important thing. that is how we become lucrative. the viewership is now also probably the highest in the world per game. i have always maintained that IPL is recession-proof.  as far as India is concerned, and we have got newer and newer fan bases joining in. but we have to be careful going forward, because the younger generation are very discerning, and they're mostly on digital. that's why you see digital rights have gone up tremendously in price. but their experience has not been good in India today, as far as being able to watch it on a particular platform. the jio platform is not very user-friendly at the current moment. when you turn the phone around, from horizontal to vertical position, it doesn't capture that, and it loses the faith in the fans, and they are really disappointed from when I talked to them.

Rica:IPL has been your passion project. the league has been attacked for corruption, spot fixing, teams have even been banned. do you think IPL has now been able to do a clean-up