Professional sports in the U.S. have free agency. Soccer has the transfer window. Meanwhile, the Indian Premier League cricket has the IPL Auction, and it’s the strangest, cruelest, and most brilliant event in professional sports.
The Indian cricket auction is the cruelest free agency in sports
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
This is an actual, live, paddle-in-the-air auction where players are sold to the highest bidder. Each team can use its remaining budget (what we’d call a salary cap) to buy new players, and if a player is cut or released they will enter the following year’s auction pool. This leads to bizarre scenarios where a player could be making millions, then forced to accept a pittance if bidding for them is weak in the following year — and they can’t say no to the team that bought them, unless they want to leave the IPL.
There were 352 players up for auction over the weekend and the vast majority of them didn’t sell. There was good reason for this, and, like the whole event, it’s because the IPL is bizarre.
What made 2017 weirder than usual?
The IPL auction operates under a 10-year cycle. This means that every 10 years every single player is released into free agency and can be bought by the highest bidder. The cycle begins again in 2018, meaning that everyone in the 2017 auction would be a one-year rental before being out of their contract and back into the 2018 auction.
It was widely believed that there wouldn’t be much spending, since every player would be a rental — but then there was Ben Stokes. The British all-rounder (meaning he can bat and bowl) was the marquee name in 2017. Bidding opened at INR 2 crore (approximately $300,000 U.S.) and swelled to INR 14.5 crore (approximately $2.16 million) when the bidding was over.
Perhaps the best part of this video is watching the owner of the Rising Pune Supergiants react when he realizes how much his team overpayed for Stokes on a one-year rental. He’s in the middle of the table.
“Reverse bidding” is a thing, and it’s so cruel.
Let’s say you’re a decent player, but not a superstar. It’s not likely there will be a feeding frenzy over you, so teams can put in a “reverse bid.” This means teams are starting the bidding below your base cost. So you’re literally watching teams see how little they can pay you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
2018 is going to be buckwild.
Not only is every player put in free agency, but two teams will be back from expulsion after the Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals were banned from the league for two years for match fixing. So, every single player will be up for bid, there are more teams than ever, and everyone will be hungry to win.
The best part is that this isn’t even really about winning cricket games. The auction is a chance for India’s ultra-wealthy to show each other up in public by busting out the checkbooks. The whole thing is friggin’ beautiful.
Should we adopt a player auction in the U.S.?
Hell no. It’s horrible for every single player involved. That doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate it from afar.
