The 400-Crore Loan-Obligation Trap: How IPL Franchises Are Selling Their Last Asset, Not Building Finished Products

In the 17th over of a match last season, I paused at the scorecard. A bowler was delivering who, six months earlier, had bowled a final for a different franchise. In the same match, a batter walked out who had been bought at the highest price in the previous auction—yet he was now in his third team in four years. Reading those two names together raised a question that cuts to the heart of the IPL’s current economics: are teams developing players, or simply renting out their last remaining asset?

Since recently being appointed as a BCB advisor, I have had the chance to see governance and financing up close. When I joined The Daily Star sports desk in 2026, the IPL auction felt like pure cricket festival. But seven years later, when I see a franchise tying up an asset valued at ₹400 crore into a 'loan-with-obligation' structure, it becomes clear that behind the auction confetti and secret initials, some structural problems are quietly growing.

The financial nature of IPL franchises today is essentially unaccounted for. Calculating at the end of the 2026 season, the combined salary bills and trade logistics of a dozen franchises exceed ₹8,000 crore—yet a large portion of that is not in any single team's hands.

Let me bring in a number that makes the issue clearer and puts the entire IPL model under question. In the 2026-25 cycle, after the IPL's central revenue distribution, the average salary budget of a franchise exceeded ₹100 crore. But the problem is not the salary amount—the problem is that invisible cost outside salaries, which has now reached ₹35 crore to ₹75 crore for each team.

This is exactly where my fear lies. The smaller franchises have entered a system where they develop players, retain them, and then those players enter the usage of larger franchises—another cycle.

When importing that football 'press' concept into cricket, one thing gets forgotten. What is a transfer fee in football is still an auction price in cricket. Yet in the IPL's current structure, the same player plays for three franchises in one season, but the 'development cost' is borne by one team. This is heavier than football's loan-obligation model, because there is no permanent transfer profit at the end of the season.

The same logic applies to the Bangladesh Premier League and the Lanka Premier League. Bangladeshi teams entering the Lanka Premier League have entered a structure that puts pressure on the developing side.

My calculation could be wrong. But those who say 'the auction market will handle this'—my question to them is: why has the same wicketkeeper's value tripled in the last three seasons, while his number of games for the national team dropped 40%? The gap between what the market prices and what the field delivers is my core argument.

What I see is that the IPL is now a 'win-now' system. A big team can buy and keep youth. A small team develops youth and is forced to sell. This inequality is not an inequality of money—it is an inequality of structure. And the bigger the structural inequality, the weaker the IPL's competitive balance becomes.

I always remember one thing when writing—I don't need to break any rules; I just need to know how to read the script sideways. Auction rules are actually a mirror in which the real intentions of franchises are visible.

If in the next two seasons the ratio between salary cap and central distribution rises another 10%, we will see at least three mid-tier franchises, while running their academies, lean toward loan-based trades. Then the question will remain one: will the IPL remain a cricket league, or become a market for franchise investment?