New Delhi: The head of the world cricketers’ union has said that Indian Premier League (IPL) players must be “paid fairly and proportionately”. Earlier too, The Telegraph, London had reported on how IPL cricketers are paid a far lower share of revenue than in other major sports leagues.In most sports leagues, at least 50% of the revenue is paid to the players in wages. The English Premier League pays 71% of league revenue to players. But in the IPL, players receive the lowest, just 18% of what the team manages to earn.Tom Moffat, the chief executive of the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations (FICA), the worldwide body for players, has called on players in the IPL and the Women’s Premier League to be paid a fair share of revenue, as per global standards. “Players love playing in the IPL but there’s no doubt that if you look at it comparatively, as a percentage of overall revenue that the league generates, overall player payments are well behind other analogous sporting leagues,” Moffat is cited as telling The Telegraph.“We look forward to continuing to see the IPL and WPL be successful and to players being paid fairly and proportionately to their contribution to the success of these and other leagues around the world,” he added.FICA is affiliated with players’ unions from seven of the 12 full member nations – including England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies. But there is no players’ union in India, and this is seen as one of the reasons that makes it difficult for cricketers to demand to be paid a higher share of IPL revenue, and pull themselves up in line with other bodies in the world.Source: The Telegraph, LondonThis year, all 10 franchises will receive £48 million a year from the Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) in India – who, says the newspaper, “themselves take around half of the league’s revenue. Additionally, franchises will expect to earn at least another £5 million in gate revenue, sponsorship and merchandise sales, taking their total revenue well clear of £50 million; the figure is significantly higher for teams from the biggest markets like Mumbai Indians.”Even after the BCCI’s share, “teams only pass on around 18 per cent of their earnings to the players in salaries. This year, each IPL franchise has a salary cap of £9.5 million (95 crore). The cap will increase slightly, to £10 million, next season.”Earlier, analysis had showed how apart from the biggest football league in the world, the English Premier League which pays 71% of the total revenue to its players, the highest share by any sports league in the world, the baseball, basketball, ice hockey and rugby leagues in the US paid their players 54%, 50%, 50% and 48% respectively of the total revenue.
