The Indian Premier League

The Indian Premier League (IPL), created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and sanctioned by the International Cricket Council, is a Twenty20 competition. It was announced after the BCCI declined permission to allow BCCI-contracted players to play in the Indian Cricket League.The league is scheduled to start in April 2008 and will last for 44 days, involving 59 matches. The prize money for the league will be around Rs 13 crore (US $3million).
Each team will have a pool of 16 players, of whom four will be international and four from the Under-19 level or from the catchment area where the team is based.
The governing council consists of Sunil Gavaskar, MAK Pataudi and Ravi Shastri, Rajiv Shukla, Chirayu Amin, Inderjit Singh Bindra and Arun Jaitley.
Although it is going to be a franchise system, some foreign players have already been contracted by the BCCI to play in the IPL.
On January 14th, 2008, it was announced that a consortium consisting of India's Sony Television network and Singapore-based World Sports Group secured the rights of the Indian Premier League.[1] The record deal has a duration of ten years at a cost of US$1.026 billion. As part of the deal, the consortium will pay the BCCI US$918 million for the telecast rights and US$108 million for the promotion of the tournament.[2]
The BCCI announced that the bulk of the proceeds from this deal would initially go to the IPL franchises themselves, gradually reducing this amount over the life of the contract.

Franchises

The enormity of the Indian Premier League was confirmed when the winning bidders for the eight franchises were announced on January 24, 2008. [3] The league will initially consist of eight teams in its inaugural season. The cities of Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mohali and Mumbai will all be represented. Many famous names were rumored to be in the running for franchises, including Hollywood Actor Russell Crowe, Bollywood actors Shah Rukh Khan and Priety Zinta and cricket star Sachin Tendulkar. The official list of franchise owners announced and the winning bids were (all amounts in US$): Vijay Mallya's UB group (Bangalore, 111.6 million), India Cements (Chennai, 91 million), GMR group (Delhi 84 million), Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad, 107 million), a consortium led by Emerging Media (Jaipur, 67 million), Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment (Kolkata, 75.09 million), Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia, Karan Paul and Dabur's Mohit Burman (Mohali, 76 million) and Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Limited (Mumbai, 111.9 million). [4] The IPL fetched US$723.59 million, almost double the combined base price of US$400 million. Mumbai was the most expensive team, costing over US$111.9 million.