The Board of Control for Cricket in India has reportedly decided that the 2025 edition of the Indian Premier League will remain a 74-match tournament, rather than have 84 games, as was originally envisaged by the BCCI when the tender document for the 2023-27 IPL media rights cycle was drawn up.
For the record, the IPL media rights tender had 74 matches in the 2023 and 2024 seasons, 84 matches each in the 2025 and 2026 seasons and a maximum of 94 matches for the final year of the deal in 2027.
However, per ESPNcricinfo, BCCI has now decided to stick to 74 matches in the 2025 season so as to help Team India players manage their workload ahead of the WTC final in 2025.
The WTC 2025 final is scheduled for 11 June at Lord’s after the IPL 2025 season and BCCI wants the Indian international players to have enough time to recover from the potential workload.
The report also added that IPL 2025 will likely be held between mid-March and the last week of May.
Player workload concerns notwithstanding, the development will no doubt be welcomed by the two holders of the IPL media rights – Disney Star for linear TV and JioCinema for digital streaming. For as per what SportzPower has been told regarding IPL 2024, the losses toted up by the two (soon to be sibling) companies tote up to Rs 2000 crore ($238 million). Put bluntly, if the per season match count were to remain at 74 till the end of the cycle in 2027, the media rights holders would be more than happy. Or so we believe.
