Given the recent hype IPL has been enjoying, I decided to do a small comparison here:
League: Governing, Game Format, Finances
| Criteria/League | IPL | EPL |
| Year of Formation | 2008 | 1992 |
| Season | April-May | August-May |
| No. of Franchises | 8 | 20 (over 40 leagues have played) |
| No. of Matches | 59 | 380 |
| Location of games | Night matches on Home and away basis | Home and away basis |
| Revenue | Yet To Be Seen | 3.7 Billion $ (2007-2008) by all clubs. |
| TV rights (including overseas rights) | ~$1 Billion for 10 yrs by Sony (addition $10-15 million by Network Ten) | £45 million a year from 2007 to 2010 |
| Prize Money | 5 million $ | £10 million |
| Governed By | IPL council | operated and jointly owned by the 20 member clubs. |
| Record Attendance for sports event (1,2) | 13,094,307 (Average: 34,459) 2006-2007 EPL | 425,622 (Average: 30,401) 2006-07 Commonwealth Bank Series |
Finances:
Prize Money: per se is not such a big attraction in either case. EPL is owned by member clubs, so members draw their money from money pool with EPL accumulated mainly by broadcasting revenues.
In case of IPL , the revenue share model in years one to five is that 80% of the revenues from media rights are being redistributed back to the franchises, and 60% of the central sponsorship revenue gradually reducing this amount over the life of the contract.
Individual club earnings are from stadium tickets, club advertisements for both leagues. So that will be key differentiating factor in earnings of clubs just like EPL (although some difference is created at Prize Money level as well). MANU Vs Liverpool may draw record crowds so these two clubs are far ahead in the year-end earnings amongst the 20 clubs.
(P.S.:I don't know on what basis is broadcasting revenue distributed among EPL clubs and on what basis will it be distributed to IPL clubs by IPL governing council.)
Absolute fan base may not be such a big factor since TV audiences have already been covered by TV rights, where both are on nearly equal footing.
Stadium attendances will be the key differentiating factor. Average stadium attendance may be close but absolute is what is going to earn money here. So here IPL loses out and again since it is hosting much less no. of games.
EPL registers record attendances in both home and away games. Enough heat has been generated for IPL and all matches are being hosted in Indian cities (some like Kolkata which have recorded upto 100,000 in ODI matches) so here too IPL is matching upto EPL's strength.
Merchandise wise anyone can guess IPL will be nowhere close to EPL. IPL franchises are still building their clubs while EPL has a legacy of 16 yrs behind it and merchandise forms a decent part of premiership club incomes.
Conclusion:
IPL may lose out to EPL because EPL' season is longer so more matches and more money. IPL may again just lost out to EPL on per match basis as well since EPL's tickets are again overpriced (184$ for a 2006-2007 Arsenal match!!) which may not be a feasibility in India. Also IPL clubs may have negligible merchandise sales.
Click here to see 07/08 Ticket Prices for Premier League Clubs.
P.S.: I don't follow EPL so there may be inaccuracies here. Correct me if I am wrong.
Addendum
Read Ganesh's comments, I think there are certain correction to contribution of merchandise sales in my post. Also I mis-understood the TV rights part. Figures for EPL are per club.
9 comments:
Well, its fine to compare English Premier League (EPL) and Indian Premier League (IPL)..
But I don't think its correct to conclude that IPL may 'LOSE' out to EPL..
You are comparing 2 entirely different games here..
In volume terms, IPL may be at disadvantage due to lack of stadium capacities in major cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Mohali - all have less than 50K)
even in viewer ship, you are comparing a transcontinental appeal of football/soccer to a limited (to India ;) appeal of cricket..
as regards merchandise, i think IPL is going to give a tough comptt..
If they design good Dresses and all (which i presume they wud ..considering a good involvement of glamour), it would sell like hot cakes.. specially with likes of sachin, dhoni around.. (the dresses of ICL of Zee were pathetic btw)..
@sid:
thr was lot of discussion gng ard without any data and ppl actually were saying that IPL is bigger than EPL...
so I spent some time doing research on situation as is. And AFA merchandise is concerned I don't think IPL can match EPL because the crowd just seems fanatic for their EPL clubs
I mean how many do u think have bought India WC T-Shirts!!
A couple of thoughts.
First, the TV rights figure of £45 million per year in the EPL is per club, coming out of a £2.7 billion deal for three years (2007-08 to 2009-10). By comparision, the per franchise per year figure in the initial years in the IPL is $10 million, about an eighth of what the EPL clubs earn. This is not an equal footing, as you claim, even accounting for the fact that teams in the EPL play nearly three times the number of games that teams in the IPL will play.
Second, ticket money also sees a wide disparity. The total revenue from seven home games in the IPL will be in the range of $1.5 to $2 million (more for teams with stadium capacity greater than 50000). In contrast, a club like Manchester United earns in excess of £1 million per home game. An average EPL club might earn a little more than half that amount per game.
Third, absolute fan base (defined as the number of fans a club/franchise has/will have all over the world) will play an important role. Teams such as Manchester United have a massive worldwide fan base, which translates into huge revenues from merchandise sales, typically in the region of £12-13 million per year. In the case of Manchester United, this fan base has been built over the past 60+ years, starting with the era of the Busby babes (possibly even earlier). For the IPL franchises to build such a huge fan base will take a long time. Further, because of income and cost disparity between England and India, cost of merchandise of the IPL franchises will be significantly lower than that of the EPL clubs.
All this, however, does agree with your conclusion that as far as revenues go, the IPL franchises will hardly be in the league of even a mid table club in the EPL.
@Sailesh...
thnx for correcting me at places and I think its quite clear that I don't follow EPL at all
well as far as ticket disparity goes I think we are a little in agreement because there I don't see much difference.
I did underestimate the contribution of merchandise sales because I couldn't find any resource on web which could substantiate any figure for merchandise sales. If you have one can you post it here.
nice
one more common mistake in analysis I have seen multiple times on cricinfo now is that dhoni earns moe for 6 weeks of work than lampard..that may be true in terms of maths but is meaningless because the ipl season and the money is not controlled by Dhoni..the clubs are going to have paid the same even if the season was longer..they only had a 5million budget and it was a controlled auction
@Anonymous:
Don't worry my friend, I have even heard of articles where they claimed on per hour basis Dhoni even surpassed Mukesh Ambani.
Now what do you call that??
KT, only presenting figures to drive home the point of how disparate the incomes of EPL clubs and IPL franchises is likely to be.
It's hard to get an exact figure for merchandising revenue for Manchester United, because they have sold the entire merchandising rights to Nike, and the money they get from Nike is always reported as a sum of licensing and sponsorship fee. This website provides a figure, probably not very accurate, but most likely in the ballpark.
I'm not sure what you're really comparing. It is difficult to compare 2 sports that don't have audiences in the same country, especially when one of them has never ever happened before. So if you are trying to understand how the EPL would fare in India, which you probably are, then it is a no-brainer. Cricket is more popular than football, therefore the IPL is more popular than the EPL.
The dynamics of the 2 are also very different. While the domestic league is the primary focus of any player in football, his focus is on international events in cricket. In football, the clubs are in charge of wages, training, development, schooling, housing, families, motivation, physiotherapy, mentality coaching etc. On the other hand, the IPL teams lose control over their players after barely 2 months. There is no scouting for young talent and grooming them at their own camp involved. All the grooming, development etc that I mentioned above are done by the international teams.
Conclusion: It is really difficult to compare the EPL and IPL due to the various variables involved in the equation. The verdict is clear : Let the fans enjoy what they want because ultimately the cliche holds true - sport is the winner!
@Arjwiz
well thts what I felt while comparing the two leagues, but I just wanted to compare them in very basic terms.
but to say that football and cricket don't have fans in the same country would not be totally correct. England is one of those countries. But I also did the comparison since both ICC has always been trying to increase scope of intl cricket and recently EPL matches have also been played in foreign venues. They too are trying to increase their intl fan base.
In fact I came across a Cricinfo article which claims that with the way EPL is aiming IPL and EPL will clash for fan base in India!! So in that scenario and otherwise, this comparison will have to be made someday.
I don't rem the exact issue but if you could lay hands on last 3-4 monthly issue of Outlook you will come across articles that in small places echo the same thing.
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