Indian cricket’s record ad year pushes team valuations into Premier League territory

A reported $1.3 billion offer for Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket team Rajasthan Royals underscores how premium sports inventory is fueling franchise valuations in cricket-crazy India.

The bid follows the IPL’s biggest year yet in terms of viewership, ad spend and digital subscriptions, highlighting cricket’s unmatched commercial grip across India.

If completed, the deal will make the Royals more valuable than most English Premier League (EPL) clubs, surpassing all but the “Big Six” of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur.

Harsh Talikoti, a director in investment bank Houlihan Lokey’s corporate valuation advisory services practice, said the surge in value of the league’s franchises reflects the IPL’s growing dominance as a global sporting property.

“The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has created and nurtured IPL into one of the best sporting properties in the world. The anticipated high valuations of individual franchises are a direct reflection of the IPL’s monumental commercial success,” Talikoti told The Current.

Indeed, other IPL franchises may follow suit, with 2025 IPL champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru newly tipped for a significant valuation that could be as high as $2 billion.

Why it matters

Cricket commands unmatched viewership across India, translating into record ad revenues and brand sponsorships. That dynamic was on full display during the 2025 IPL season, which drew an estimated 1.19 billion viewers and generated roughly $600 million in ad revenue.

“The IPL’s immense popularity creates a virtuous cycle: It attracts top-tier sponsors, sells out stadiums and builds immense brand equity, all of which flows directly to the teams,” Tolikati said. “You cannot separate the value of a franchise from the immense value of the league itself.”

Cricket’s rising franchise values are also intersecting with a shift in how media around the sport is bought and sold. In a recent op-ed, Tejinder Gill, India managing director at The Trade Desk, said, “Cricket will be the spotlight in 2026,” pointing to February’s T20 World Cup schedule — including India’s recent opener against the U.S. at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium and the highly anticipated India-Pakistan match in Colombo, Sri Lanka — as “appointments that concentrate audience attention at a scale few markets can match.”

Live sports, he added, are the ideal “conduit to showcase why auction-based buying is superior to the guaranteed packages that have dominated Indian media buying for years,” especially when brands can plan for connected screens and use commerce-media data to “optimize in real time and capture attention when it matters most.”

What’s next?

According to Tolikati, the league’s growth story is still in its early innings. “IPL is probably the youngest of marquee sporting properties in the world alongside NFL, NBA [and] EPL,” he said. “Future league expansion and a more structured push into international markets, particularly the United States, represent very large, untapped potential revenue streams.”

In that sense, the reported billion-dollar-plus offer for a single franchise may be less of a valuation peak than a signal. “It’s a clear market indicator that investors are confidently pricing in the league’s next chapter of explosive growth,” he added.

The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.