BIRTH OF IPL

The inauguration of IPL was held back in 2007 as a competitive response to ICL.
Originally IPL was supposed to be launched 2-3 years later than it did but since ICL
was launched in 2007, it fast tracked the birth of IPL. In other words, ICL was the
catalyst in the launching of IPL.

Since IPL has been a subcommittee of the BCCI since the very start, and because it
falls directly under BCCI it is treated as a domestic tournament. Having no backup
for a tournament this big was quite a risk but since Lalit Modi had the vision and
Sharad Pawar being the president of BCCI at that time, who was also a big
supporter for Lalit Modi gave him the free hand to full fill that work because
something like this had never taken place in the cricketing world especially in
India.

Coming to how the cities were chosen or named, the eight metros were identified
which includes six metros plus Mohali and Jaipur. So basically it is six metros plus
two other cricketing hubs. Also according to him, there wasn’t any cricketing hub
that was not covered other than Indore and Nagpur. And central India is not the
best place in the world in April and May in terms of sporting activities so he thinks
that this would have been discussed and that is how they would have agreed on
the teams.

The critical component of IPL is fan engagement as the goal has always been to
engage the fans as much as possible. The main key to how to engage the fans also
depends on what the team franchise does. If we take Mumbai Indians as an
example, in this case they already have Sachin Tendulkar as their icon player. But
on the other hand if we take Chennai Super Kings as an example, they had no
such players on their side who were an icon at that time. But because of their
performance, their fan engagement increased and now Dhoni is the heart of
Chennai. Also if we talk about Rajasthan Royals, people didn’t consider them
seriously, they felt like they were an underdog team. But having the presence of
the great Shane Warne as the captain and coach took them a long way which also
helped them win the first IPL ever.

So in all, everything depends on the fan engagement activities but the most
important of all is how the team performs.