By Karan Taurani@Elara Capital

We believe the pricing (of teams) is at a premium as the average acquisition cost per team was around INR 900 crore for the men’s team back in 2008; this was at a time when men’s cricket had a strong recall and a large audience base , as compared to women’s IPL that is more new as a property

If we compare the media rights, which was INR 190 crore per year, this was a fraction of men’s IPL rights (around INR 3,500 crore on a like to like basis as number of matches in women’s IPL are expected to be approximately one third in the initial seasons). Thus in terms of media rights, the purchase for women’s rights was around 5.4 percent of the men’s rights

Further, in terms of team acquisition, the recent price two years ago was INR 8,000 crore on an average for men’s IPL and the women’s team has been acquired for an average price of INR 900 crore, which is 11 percent of men’s team acquisition cost

We thereby believe that the owners have paid a premium price for buying the teams basis above calculations. However, the big advantage these owners have is that most of them already have a men’s team franchise, which means an existing recall in terms of brand.

The only concerns would be how 1) platforms generate interest within advertisers for this property 2) a lot of money to be spent on awareness/promotion for women’s cricket as a content play.

Generally, women sports awareness have been more successful in offerings like tennis, badminton, etc due to ample women sportsmen in these sports. We believe it’s very important for women cricketers to also turn into famous personalities and have a big following to make women’s IPL a big success.