The League Ladder: Why Cricket May Need to Accept a Tiered Economy

Issue No 38

Cricket is entering a phase it has not fully admitted yet.

Not every league can be the IPL.

Not every league should try to be the IPL.

And not every successful league needs to measure itself by whether it can attract the same players, pay the same salaries, or create the same commercial noise as the richest tournaments in the world.

That does not make those leagues failures. It might make them smarter.

In Formula 1, everyone competes on the same grid, but not everyone is operating with the same expectation. Some teams expect to win world championships. Some expect to fight for podiums. Some are happy to lead the midfield. Some are developing drivers, building technology, protecting sponsorship value, and trying to improve year by year.

The teams do not say that too loudly because sport still needs ambition. But everyone understands the ladder.

Cricket may be heading in the same direction.

The problem is that cricket has not yet accepted the ladder. So too many leagues are behaving like they are all supposed to be championship contenders.

That is where the danger starts.

The global T20 market is starting to squeeze itself.

SA20 is pushing hard. The BBL is trying to protect its position. The Hundred has taken in private investment. Major League Cricket is still building but has the advantage of the American market. The ILT20 has money. The CPL has culture, history, and regional value. The PSL has depth and audience. The IPL still sits above everyone.

The result is predictable: the same group of elite players are being chased by more competitions, more owners, more broadcasters, and more commercial promises.

That is good for players in the short term. They have more options, more leverage, and more ways to turn skill into income.

But for leagues, it creates a harder question.

Are they paying for value, or are they paying because they are afraid of being left behind?

That question matters because player salaries are not just sporting decisions anymore. They are business decisions. Every contract says something about what a league believes it is, what it can afford, and how quickly it thinks it can grow.

SA20 has already shown how aggressive this market can become. Recent reports have put some SA20 player deals above AU$1 million, while Cricket Australia’s published BBL overseas draft bands for 2025 listed platinum overseas players at AU$360,000 to AU$420,000 depending on availability.

That gap tells a story.

It is not just about South Africa paying more than Australia. It is about two leagues operating with different ownership models, different urgency, different market pressures, and different views of what they need to be.

This is where cricket often gets the conversation wrong.

People say a league needs bigger names to become bigger commercially. There is truth in that. Stars matter. Big players attract eyeballs, sponsors, broadcasters, and social attention.

But stars do not create a commercial economy by themselves.

The IPL does not generate IPL money simply because great players are present. The IPL is built on India’s cricket obsession, its massive media market, its sponsor depth, its ownership structures, its city loyalties, its timing, its scarcity, and its position as the centre of the global T20 calendar.

The scale is difficult to copy. The BCCI announced IPL media rights for the 2023 to 2027 cycle at INR 48,390.32 crore, a number that immediately separates the IPL from every other cricket league in the world.

So when another league says it wants to chase the IPL, it has to be clear what it actually means.

Does it want IPL-level players?

IPL-level audiences?

IPL-level franchise valuations?

IPL-level media rights?

IPL-level cultural relevance?

Those are different things.

A league can buy a player. It cannot instantly buy the market around him.

This is the cleanest way to test the theory.

If Virat Kohli played in the CPL, the league would become more valuable immediately. It would get more Indian attention. More global cricket media would follow it. Sponsors would ask questions. Broadcasters would take another look. Ticket demand would rise. Social clips would fly.

But would the CPL suddenly become the IPL?

No.

Because the CPL does not operate in the Indian market. It does not have India’s population, India’s advertising depth, India’s media rights economy, or India’s domestic cricket obsession.

That does not make the CPL weak.

It means the CPL’s power is different.

The CPL’s advantage is culture, destination, Caribbean identity, diaspora relevance, party atmosphere, regional tourism, and West Indian talent. It can sell something that no other league can authentically copy.

CPL has already shown commercial value beyond the boundary. The league reported 1.17 billion in broadcast and digital viewership in 2025, while regional reporting from Barbados pointed to millions in direct economic contribution and media exposure value from hosting.

That is not nothing.

But it is a different type of value.

So the question for CPL should not be, “How do we become the IPL?”

The better question is, “What can the Caribbean own that nobody else can?”

That is a more honest starting point. It is also a more sustainable one.

Cricket may need to accept that its leagues are going to sit in different lanes.

At the top, there will be global money leagues. The IPL is already there. SA20 is trying to climb, helped by the fact that all six SA20 teams are linked to IPL franchise ownership.

The Hundred is also repositioning after private investment, with the ECB finalising strategic partner deals and investors taking operational control from October 2025 in most cases.

Major League Cricket has the advantage of America, which gives it long-term commercial intrigue even while it is still building the depth, tradition, and mainstream cricket audience needed to become a consistent top-tier product.

Then there will be strong regional leagues.

These leagues may not always pay the most, but they can still be commercially successful if they understand their strengths. The BBL has the Australian summer, family entertainment, strong venues, and a domestic sports market with real spending power. CPL has Caribbean culture and tourism. PSL has Pakistan’s talent depth and fan intensity.

Those competitions might not win the wage race, but they can still matter. They can produce players. They can serve local audiences. They can create broadcast inventory. They can build national pathways. They can give young players professional experience. They can support tourism, government strategy, and cricket development.

That is not failure.

That is the ladder.

In football, not every club is Real Madrid. In basketball, not every league is the NBA. In Formula 1, not every team expects to win the constructors’ championship.

Cricket still talks as if every league must chase the same names to prove its seriousness.

That is the mistake.

The F1 comparison works because it shows how a sport can have different competitive lanes within the same global ecosystem.

But it also exposes cricket’s weakness.

Formula 1 has central governance, commercial structure, technical rules, and financial controls. For 2026, F1’s cost cap has been increased to US$215 million, and the purpose of the cap is to control team spending and support a healthier competitive environment.

Cricket has nothing close to that across franchise leagues.

There is no global franchise calendar with real authority.

There is no common player workload system that all leagues respect.

There is no shared salary logic.

There is no global mechanism to stop leagues from overpaying beyond their revenue base.

There is no accepted understanding that some leagues are premium global products, some are strong regional products, and some are development products.

So cricket may be drifting toward an F1-style ladder, but without the structure that makes that ladder manageable.

That is the risk.

There is nothing wrong with players earning more.

For too long, cricket underpaid too many of the people who actually create the product. If the franchise market gives players more opportunity, that is a positive development.

The concern is not player earnings.

The concern is whether leagues are paying salaries that their markets cannot yet support.

A league can overpay for one or two players and call it a statement.

It can do that for a season.

Maybe two.

But if the extra salary spend does not lead to better media rights, better sponsorship, better ticket sales, better franchise value, or better audience growth, then it is not investment. It is leakage.

That is where league owners have to be disciplined.

A star player should not just create attention. He should create economic return.

If he does not, the league is not buying growth. It is buying noise.

This is especially important for leagues like CPL.

Should CPL be more conservative than IPL, SA20, or MLC?

Yes.

But conservative does not mean lacking ambition.

It means knowing the commercial ceiling of the market and building around the value that already exists.

For CPL, that might mean spending strongly on the right West Indian stars, building deeper regional fan attachment, expanding tourism partnerships, improving matchday experience, strengthening diaspora distribution, and using digital content more aggressively.

It might mean choosing fewer imported names, but making sure those names fit the product.

It might mean accepting that the league does not need to win every auction.

It needs to win its lane.

That is the key distinction.

The leagues that survive this next phase will not be the ones that simply spend the most. They will be the ones that understand what they are selling.

The next few years will test franchise cricket.

SA20 will push upward.

The BBL will have to decide whether it wants to be a premium Australian summer entertainment product or a global salary competitor.

The Hundred will have to prove that private investment can translate into a stronger cricket product, not just bigger valuations.

MLC will have to turn market potential into cricket relevance.

CPL will have to keep converting culture and regional identity into commercial value.

The PSL will have to protect its strength while navigating Pakistan’s market realities.

The ILT20 will have to prove that money and location can build emotional attachment over time.

Each league has a different challenge.

That is the point.

They are not all in the same race.

Cricket does not need every league to become the IPL.

It needs every league to become the best version of itself.

Some leagues should fight at the front. Some should build from the midfield. Some should become elite development platforms. Some should be tourism products. Some should be content products. Some should serve local cricket first and global cricket second.

The danger is not that cricket develops a ladder.

The danger is that cricket develops a ladder while pretending everyone is standing on the same step.

That is how leagues overspend.

That is how players get squeezed.

That is how calendars break.

That is how commercial models collapse under the pressure of chasing names.

The future of franchise cricket will not be decided only by who can pay the most.

It will be decided by who understands their market, their lane, and their role in the wider cricket economy.

The smartest leagues will not ask, “How do we beat the IPL?”

They will ask, “What can we own?”

That is the future.

Not one global race.

A league ladder.

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