India, March 28 -- The Indian Premier League (IPL) kicked off in 2008 to the sound of dollars. With teams and players being bought for big, never-before-seen money, the cricketing world was shaken out of its stupor. At that point, there was an overwhelming sense of there being a world beyond international cricket, but, it also had a very friends-and-family feel to it with the then IPL commissioner Lalit Modi pulling everyone he knew into the project. The idea was sound, and there was promise, but no guarantee. It was, as many acknowledged, a long-shot. The auction, held on January 24, 2008, saw the teams sold to a mix of business moguls and Bollywood stars, with the average bid significantly exceeding the minimum required base price of $50 million per team. The Mumbai Indians were the most expensive team, sold at $111.9 million. Royal Challengers Bangalore were next at $111.6 million, while Rajasthan Royals were the cheapest buy at $67 million. All were big numbers then; they are chump change now. The fledgling has now turned into a behemoth that brings almost 80% of the annual revenue of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the world's richest cricket body. It is self-sustaining and has a captive audience - the kind that will tune in every night. And if there was any doubt about its financial viability, that was blown away by the valuations of Rajasthan Royals, which changed hands at roughly $1.63 billion, the bid being backed by Walmart heir Rob Walton, and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), acquired at about $1.78 billion by a consortium that includes the Aditya Birla Group, Blackstone and US sports investor, David Blitzer. IPL valuations were a grey area in the past, and when the league's value dropped from $11.2 billion in 2023 to $8.8 billion in 2025 (as per a report from D&P Advisory), everyone expected a big correction to follow. Despite these headwinds, the IPL has powered on. It is getting big deals, the legacy teams are all making easy money, the fan following is real, and the league is popular. The promise has now become a guarantee, drawing investors from around the world. When the IPL was first launched, many were sceptical of the financial model. Leagues in India had never quite worked in the past. But the sheer heft of the IPL now needs to be seen to be believed. Its growth trajectory mirrors that of franchises in the National Football League (NFL) and National Basketball Association (NBA). But what took decades in the US has happened in under 20 years in India. According to Forbes, NFL team valuations have soared by roughly 25 times since 2000, dwarfing a 397% revenue increase, driven by massive media rights deals, a 67% revenue contribution from league-wide earnings, and an increase in valuation multiples from 2.9x revenue to 10x. For example, the Dallas Cowboys rose from a $713 million valuation in 2000 to $13 billion in 2025. But the NFL market is limited by population. Cricket in India, on the other hand, doesn't have that problem. The IPL is, by far, the biggest cricket league. Nothing else even comes close, and with most of the sponsorship money in the game coming from cricket. That isn't about to change anytime soon. Sports teams have become a major target of global investments. Deloitte analysts wrote in an outlook published last month that the industry is "entering an age of expansion" - and that private equity deals across sports leagues have jumped in recent years. But India was always looked at with a pinch of salt. The IPL has changed that, and it may open doors for other sporting leagues in India as well, provided they, too, can believe....