It's hard to take a stance on IPL. I like it as much as I hate it. IPL is the best thing to have happened to Cricket or it's that evil which has come to destroy the soul of the game - a case can be made for either of these points with equal conviction. Worse is every action of IPL is debatable and that doesn't help either. Should players be sold off like cattle in an auction? Should there be a cap or not? Should ICC create a window for IPL? and so on. There are just way too many questions. And opinions are equally divided on each of these questions. 

To begin with, let me admit that I like watching IPL. The quality of Cricket in a month of IPL far surpasses that of all the ODIs put together in a year. In its own way, IPL has helped Cricketers get a more fair value for their skills. Tests and T-20s are almost as far apart as two different sports for them to cannibalize each other directly (though it's month long schedule can have an impact indirectly, it's a problem we have to live with anyway if majority want to watch more T-20s than tests). And this whole theory of "too much money would spoil the youngsters" is utter bunkum. Considering what most of these Cricketers would have done otherwise, playing for India in itself is quite lucrative. Now then, do we have pay commissions for Cricketers or what? Now that I am done with all that is positive about IPL, let's look at the other side of the story.

The conflicts of interest in the IPL governing structure is so obvious and the arm-twisting so openly done, that to associate it with free markets is delusion of the highest order. None of the franchises' ownership structures are clearly out in the open; the rules keep changing every alternate day; existing clubs are allowed to retain players (which was not part of the rules during the first auction), while the two new franchises who join the bandwagon from this year have to start from scratch. One club has lesser money to play with. How much are the retained players paid? The catchment area for each of the franchises is not clearly defined and new rules for uncapped players came into effect from nowhere. There's a budget cap which is ridiculous and a floor for players which is just as ridiculous. Outside of private ownership and big money, there is not a semblance of the principles of free markets in IPL. And big money as such has nothing to do with free markets, but let's live with the narrative fallacy of better price discovery of players' skills for now.

For a league boasting so much about market determined prices (10 buyers make up a free market, it seems!) for players' skills, why do uncapped players have a regulated price? Are markets not capable of pricing them too? And why is the same not the case with uncapped players from other countries?

Why is there a budget cap? The logic seems to be that without the cap, one rich club will buy all the big players and the league would not be competitive. References to American sports leagues are made to justify it. My knowledge of American sports is very limited, so let me stay away from it. My first question is, why should there be parity in the first place? Why can't it be more meritorious? Let the rich man get the best team and thereby produce best results. Would ICC redistribute cricketers across nations to make Cricket more attractive? Then why should it be done in IPL? There is an argument that without results, clubs will not be financially sustainable and thereby hampering the health of the league itself. If that's the case why was there no cap on the price for each of the franchises sold? Also each of the franchises were sold without any players in it and the centralized revenue is shared with all the franchises proportionately. So there is a  basic level of financial parity already established. And Socialism is not the objective of the league anyway.

T-20 as a format lends itself greatly to this parity objective too. You put the best eleven players in the world in one team and a Bangalesh team on the other, wouldn't most of the matches be competitive between the two? Let's take the worst case scenario, say Mukesh Ambani buys 25 best players for $100 million, the market would still have enough players at affordable prices for other clubs. And let's not insult the intelligence of rich men by presuming that they'll splurge money just because they can afford to. The only possible issue here would be: what if Mukesh buys out the entire market of players. No, I am not going to resort to the "Markets will correct in the long run" argument here. The easier solution then is to put a cap on the number of players in a squad than the wages. Think about it, If I was Sachin I would feel that I am grossly underpaid. If someone like Gambhir gets $2.4 million, Sachin has so much more to offer as a player and as a brand ambassador. In a free market, you would clearly see a much higher premium for Sachin or say Dhoni over other players. Why is the league fair to the Gambhirs and not to the Sachins? 

Why is there a floor price for players? What purpose does it serve? This sounds like a support price for farmers to protect them during a bad monsoon year. The only difference here is that the buyers have alternative choices. If a player is worth anything more than his floor price, that would have been discovered in the process of bidding anyway. And if he's worth less, the league doesn't allow him to be bought at the price which market thinks is right for him. Lara or Swann may have been more attractive buys at a lesser price, who knows? Also I can even concoct a behavioral argument here that having a lower floor price may entice a club to start the bidding thereby rising the interest of other clubs and the player may eventually end up being paid more than the higher floor price otherwise set!

Why should there be a catchment area for each of the franchises? If CSK can pick players from NSW, why not Bengal or Bombay? Hangover of Ranji Trophy maybe. Who knows?

Prem Panicker has extensively covered the issue of conflicts of interest and the arm-twisting by BCCI in his blog over the last 3 years. So, let me save some energy and not repeat the same points here. Just ask yourself this question - would you ever invest in a company with so many conflicts of interest and shady deals? 

The problem is not so much as that IPL is not a completely free enterprise, it's that BCCI would never want it that way. BCCI would like to retain total control of the enterprise, throw in some pieces of ownership here and there, which are completely intangible and for a limited time anyway and make themselves richer in the process. The consequences of making IPL a free enterprise would directly conflict with the objectives of those in the BCCI regime. They are smart. Only, we are fools to delude ourselves associating IPL with free markets, transparency, corporate control and all that.

For a media hungry for any bit of controversy, it's amazing that there's hardly any coverage of IPL's total lack of governance ethics, conflicts of interest, shady deals and arm-twisting by insiders. And whatever little arguments are there, have concentrated on the superficial aspects of the auction process (though I would prefer a closed bidding process, I don't have a problem with the auction as it is) or have resorted to the flawed notion of IPL affecting Test Cricket or the "too much money would spoil the youngsters" logic. So long as they remain the talking points of IPL, N.Srinivasan will be a happy man.