Cricket South Africa (CSA) has announced the prize money for the inaugural edition of the SA20 League. In a lucrative announcement for all the participating players, the apex board has set aside a total of $4 Million as the prize money for the championship. This amounts to Rs. 33.5 Crore!
The ever-growing popularity of franchise-based leagues has always been attracting tremendous amounts of wealth. Cricket boards across the world are paving the way to launch their own franchise league and indulging themselves in a competitive price war over earnings and rewards.
The League is certainly going to clash with the popular franchise league in the Gulf namely the International League T-20 (ILT20). With the Proteas league already raising the bar and declaring a hefty prize money, all eyes will be on the organizers of the ILT20 who are also going to announce the same by the end of this month.
On the contrary, a major boon is that the extraordinary wealth generation in franchise leagues is distracting the centrally contracted cricketers of their national duty and they are adjusting their calendar based on the schedule of these cash-rich leagues.
However, the SA20 League’s prize money could not compete and stand against the ultra-high prize money set by the organizers of the Indian Premier League (IPL). IPL is undisputedly the richest franchise league in the world that rewards the winning franchises with a total prize money of Rs. 46.5 crores.
The BCCI had recently sold the media rights to the broadcasters of the tournament for a whopping Rs. 48,390 crores. With such a massive hike in revenue, BCCI will likely increase the prize money of the 2023 season of IPL by 20-25%.
Six teams will compete in the Inaugural SA20 League
The CSA T-20 League is set to kick start on January 10 at the Newlands Stadium in Cape Town. Notably, the owners of all the six franchises at the championship are based in India and own IPL franchises Mumbai Indians (MI Cape Town), Paarl Royals (Rajasthan Royals), Durban Super Giants (Lucknow Super Giants), Joburg Super Kings (Chennai Super Kings), Sunrisers Eastern Cape (Sunrisers Hyderabad) and Pretoria Capitals (Delhi Capitals).
