New Delhi: Former Indian Premier League Chairman Lalit Modi on Thursday predicted that in the next 15 years, women’s IPL will become the second-largest sporting league in the world, highlighting the rapid rise of the individual franchises in the women’s game.
Speaking to ANI on Thursday, he claimed its growing fan base and increasing popularity could eventually see it eclipse men’s sporting leagues.
“What the men’s IPL was 20 years ago, women’s cricket has reached that level already,” said the 60-year-old.
Further speaking about the growth of Indian cricket, he predicted that it would reach another level in both sporting and financial terms. He also highlighted the money invested in women’s cricket.
“Adani paid 1,600 crore for a women’s team (Gujarat Giants). Conversely, we only got around $100 million or Rs 400 crore in season one of the men’s IPL for the Mumbai Indians. So on its very debut, women’s cricket hit 1,600 crore,” he said.
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‘Bilateral Test matches will die’
Modi acknowledged the growth, but he also highlighted that matching the current multi-billion-dollar scale of mature men’s franchises will take time for women’s cricket. However, he assured that he could see it happening in the future.
He estimated that it will take 15 to 20 years for women’s cricket to maximise its viewership potential.
“You will see, unlike any other sporting league in the world, in any sport, that women’s cricket will become number two in the world, and after IPL, men’s cricket. And in terms of viewership, you will see that women’s cricket will also take another 20 years. It has taken 18 years for the IPL to reach where it is today, with a $2 billion team. And women’s cricket has just begun, but 15 years from now, Women’s cricket will also be worth billions of dollars for each team”, he added.
Modi also reflected on the time when the Women’s Premier League was introduced in India. He recalled his tenure as the Vice President of the BCCI in 2006, during which he orchestrated the crucial merger of the independent Women’s Cricket Association of India (WCAI) into the mainstream BCCI fold. He further added that he never imagined women’s cricket would come this far with a lot of achievement in the journey.
“I was the one who introduced women to the Constitution and the BCCI. We started to achieve that in my time alone when we started having women coming and women’s cricket starting out there… I did not think the IPL ecosystem would be ready for a women’s league for 10 or 12 years, but they have done it now, and they have achieved it”, he said.
Modi not only praised the journey of women’s cricket, the Indian cricket ecosystem, and its financial growth, but he also spoke about the changes the Indian cricket ecosystem may witness in the future and the areas it should work on. He warned that traditional bilateral red-ball series are on a path to extinction unless radical commercial interventions are introduced to recapture global audiences and ensure the sport’s long-term survival.
“I am saying that bilateral Test matches will die”, he said. “The next prediction of mine is that now they should allow IPL-type (T20-type) Test matches.”
(Edited by Saptak Datta)