Cricket awash with rupees from heaven

Those lamenting the "Indianisation" of world cricket, particularly the distraction of its Indian Premier League, which has even been blamed for England's recent humiliation against the West Indies, should consider the revenue India generates for Test playing nations.

This wealth is often overlooked when traditionalists focus on India's enthusiasm for the Twenty20 variety of the game. At the recent cricket auction England players Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff fetched $US1.55 million ($2.36 million) each and presumably were thinking of the rupee when their team collapsed for just 51 runs to lose to the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.

Cricket Australia receives nothing from the IPL, although some of its contracted players earn as much for six weeks' work as they do for the rest of the year.

But Australia does very well out of India because of cricket's unique revenue-sharing arrangement where the home team in a Test series keeps all the sponsorship and media rights and pays the visiting team's expenses.

Australia's earnings from a home Test series against India are three times that received from any other national team touring the country. Sales of the TV rights of the tour to India account for this.

TV earnings from matches involving India emerged as a major factor in cricket's economy from 2000 when it became apparent rights sold into India were previously undervalued. This immense TV wealth is a factor of a population which is the second largest in the world; India's passion for a sport which is 30-40 times more popular than the next most watched game; increased competition from sponsors; the growth of its economy; and new technology which has allowed more Indians to watch the game.

An indication of the changing balance of wealth was the IPL final in Mumbai, played at a time the Australian Test team was in the West Indies: hundreds of millions watched the Twenty20 match go down the last ball, while the West Indies received a paltry amount from pay TV in Australia.

CA is very guarded about how much it earns from India touring, rolling its revenue into a quadrennium in order to prevent other countries and other sports from knowing how much is paid.

However, a CA spokesman did say, "In the years 2004-05 to 2006-07, overseas media rights accounted for on average 23 per cent of our total media rights revenue. For 2007-08, that being an Indian tour year, income generated from overseas spiked to 49 per cent of our total media rights revenue." A commentary on the financials in the annual report also notes "…60-75 per cent of revenue comes from media rights". CA's total revenue for the 2007-08 year was $146.4 million and assuming the 75 per cent contribution from media rights refers to an Indian tour year, media earnings were $109.5 million.

Insofar as the international component of the media rights in 2007-08 was 49 per cent, India therefore contributed $53.6 million of the $109.5 million.