The corporate juggernaut Tata Group has been handed title sponsorship rights to the Indian Premier League for another five years for a record $300 million, the national cricket body said Saturday.
Tata is already the title sponsor of the IPL and its sister league, the Women’s Premier League, which had its first edition last year.
Jay Shah, Secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), said that the “unprecedented financial commitment reflects the immense scale and global impact of the IPL on the international sports stage”.
The IPL draws cricket’s best international players with large pay and comprises ten teams participating in the sport’s immensely popular Twenty20 format.
The lucrative competition attracts hundreds of millions of spectators and pioneered the T20 franchise concept in cricket, which has subsequently been imitated all over the globe.
Last June, the BCCI sold the broadcast rights for the next five IPL seasons to global media conglomerates for a staggering $6.2 billion.
IPL chair Arun Singh Dhumal said that the Tata group’s sponsorship of the IPL championship for 2024-28 “reaffirms the IPL’s position as a premier sporting event with global impact”.
T20 cricket is poised to be one of five new sports at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, after approval by the International Olympic Committee last year.