Tom Moffat, the chief executive of the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations (FICA), has urged Indian Premier League players to be “paid fairly and proportionately” amid concerns that cricketers are paid a far lower share of revenue than in other major sports.
In most premier sporting leagues around the world, at least half of revenue is paid to the players in wages. In England’s top-flight football league, the Premier League, 71 per cent of league revenue is paid to players. In the USA’s National Basketball Association (NBA), players are paid 50 per cent of league revenue in salaries. But in the IPL, players receive just 18 per cent of the revenue that teams earn.
“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 told Telegraph Sport. “The IPL has changed the game and the BCCI has done a fantastic job — it’s one of the leading sporting competitions in the world and that is reflected in the per game value it generates.
“We look forward to continuing to see the IPL and WPL be successful and to players being paid fairly and proportionately…”
FICA, the global cricketers’ player union, is affiliated with players’ unions from seven of the 12 full member nations — including England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies.
But there is no players’ union in India, which is considered a major obstacle to players pushing to be paid a higher share of IPL revenue.
