The TATA IPL 2025’s curtain closed with RCB’s triumph in the tournament, and the royalty of Virat Kohli soared higher than the Empire State on June 3rd, 2025. The wait for 18 years of sweat, hustle, and dreams of becoming champions has finally ended for the fans and players, whether playing or retired.
Was the wait of 18 years worth it? Ask Virat Kohli, with tears brimming in his eyes from the 3rd ball of the 2nd innings in the finals. Many great legends came and gave their best to lift the trophy for the franchise, but he stayed for 18 years, and he finally got his sweet reward.
The legacy of IPL has become so grand in the past few years, with the best talents of the cricket world dreaming about playing in the IPL. Even though IPL has generated buzz worldwide among international players, it's primarily a league rooted in one country. IPL is not just any tournament in world cricket, it has rebranded as the biggest cricket event in the world. The fans' engagement, with every celebrity wanting to be a part of it, whether big or small. The growth of IPL around the world is something to be understood and valued, yet to be shocked each year with immense growth to inspire and go bigger and better.
It all started in 2008, with the growing fanbase towards this particular sport, which made the announcement of the Twenty20 league bigger and better all over India. Many Bollywood celebrities, industrialists, and businessmen emptied their pockets to take a cut in this league as they could analyze its foreseeable future as a success. To date, many players who haven’t won this prestigious trophy won’t complain about the income they have gradually earned from their respective franchises, using their best skills to bring the trophy home. In a smaller picture, you can say that this is what cricket and IPL are all about. An asset machine that generates wealth, capitalizes markets, and engages audiences worldwide.
The first match of IPL, Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore went head to head in the opening ceremonial match, while Brendan MacCullum set the standards for the rest of the teams with his batting havoc, scoring 158* runs in 73 balls while Challengers entire batting line up tumbled on the mere score of 82 runs. The Knight Riders won the match by 140 runs. The audience had experienced a wave of wanting more, picking teams, and predicting the win with pure heart and no grudges. There was a question before IPL came into action, as India consists of so many cultures and religions, this league should not create bigger barriers, yet the first match ended with creating more unity and more opportunities to embrace their culture through this league.
The league consists of legends like Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis, Stephen Fleming, Muthiah Muralidharan, Andrew Symonds, Glenn McGrath, Kieron Pollard, and other high-profile international players. This league was bound to be the biggest and attractive tournament in the world, the question was how big and impactful it would grow to be in the coming years.
India’s largest real estate firm, then in 2008, DLF acquired the sponsorship rights for IPL at INR 40 crore per annum for the deal of 4 years. The money involved was not as lucrative as the name of DLF in front of the Indian Premier League. It was a win-win deal for DLF. The contract expired in 2012, the DLF went out after deciding not to renew the deal. It was time for some other company to wash their hands in this rising and most entertaining cricket league in the world, then in 2013 Pepsi took the rights for almost INR 80 crore per annum on a two year deal, Pepsi was already a household name in the indian family, now they took biggest centre stage in the cricket world.
By the year 2016, IPL had seen its fair share of iconic moments and also some controversies. KKR, CSK, and MI won the trophy twice. While Mumbai Indians became the team that every other team doubted themselves to play against, especially in the play-offs, the cool and calm captaincy of Mahendra Singh Dhoni established Chennai Super Kings as the vogue favourites of Indian cricket fans. The 2013 spot fixing allegations created a controversy for the league, which impacted its credibility on a massive scale, with CSK and RR banned for two seasons, and two new teams were introduced, Rising Pune Supergiants and Gujarat Lions.
The new era of IPL was about to start from 2016, with Virat Kohli entering his prime, and the end of an era was about to come with Mahendra Singh Dhoni's international retirement from multiple formats of the game. The game revenue also changed with a shift in the league, as CSK and RR were back in the IPL, and a new sponsor came in for the IPL, VIVO. A China-based technology company acquired the rights for IPL at INR 100 crore per annum for the year 2016-2017, later for 2018-2019, they acquired rights again for a whopping INR 440 crore per annum. While the deal with IPL for VIVO was for five years, VIVO later opted out due to India-China tensions at the border. Thus, the way was paved for new sponsor partners; that’s how Dream11 and the current sponsor TATA came to the fore.
As of now, IPL has grown to become a billion-dollar industry, and it will go on to become as one greatest sports league in the world in the years to come, with ICC taking strong measures to expand the outreach of cricket in many continents like Europe and USA, we will soon see many young talented players of from these places to join hands with the sport. A game of gentlemen as it is said multiple time from the past, Cricket now has become more aggressive and brutal in terms of gameplay, and a big thanks to be given to IPL, associating talents from around the world and also young guns of indian Ranji cricket, as we have seen the talent of Sai Sudharshan, Vaibhav Raghuvanshi, Priyansh Arya, Digvesh Rathi, Ashwani Kumar, Sai Kishore.
To conclude this, we can say IPL has revolutionized the face of world cricket, but it also has its imperfections. As cricket in India kept growing like a high-speed bullet train, it also came with a great fan base and a huge audience at each match, especially on the days of the final.
Each year, the production has to grow security to protect everyone, which the management failed to do in 2025 with 11 lives lost and 33 got injured documented till now while exiting the Chinnaswamy stadium. A legendary win came with a horrifying loss. Celebration turned into criticism within hours of the win.
- Sameep Mishra