Saturday, February 14, 2009

Global Economic meltdown: IPL V/s Recession

Well.....If you had been thinking that the global economic meltdown had hit sports and cricket in particular, you are wrong. If you are to go by the way the second players auction of IPL went, you would be wondering is it really a period of Recession. And as the IPL commissioner Mr. Lalit Modi claims, "IPL is Recession Proof". $13.5 million was available to the teams before the players came under the hammer. And after the auction was over, 17 players had been picked up for around $8.7 million. Roughly $500,000 per player, thats lot of money considering that fact that the economic slowdown has started to hit everyone and some say that Recession is yet to come. But if you had been wondering how so much money is there in Cricket the answer is simple, Advertisement. The corporates pump money into cricket as its the easiest way to reach a common man in India. And that money means, it also goes to the players who get paid these exorbitant sums for 2 months work. If you take the case of Mortaza whose base price was $50,000, he was sold at a whopping $600,000 after some fierce bidding. That money is 4 times more than what he would earn in a year playing for Bangladesh. Players like Flintoff and Pietersen had a field day getting auctioned for $1.55 million each. So if you ever thought Recession would hit IPL, please change your thought. IPL has just hit Recession for a massive six.

1 comments:

Karthik February 14, 2009 at 10:10 PM  

hi thats something true - but it might be that Asian economy still seems to be going with some steam in the positive.But thats always the case - it takes some time before the Asian economy catches cold.As we know when US sneezes the world catches a cold.This time India and China still has some positive local growth that it will resist the slow down for some more time.I would be interested in seeing how the IPL fares next year vs recession - keep writing