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IPL Mega Auction 2025 – Data Observations

Friday, 06-December-2024

Jabic F.

The IPL Mega Auctions happened about 10 days ago, and was very likely one of the biggest events of this end of the year in the Cricket world (certainly the T20 World). Because of my insane ability to completely miss world events sometimes, I didn’t realise they’d happened until today, when I was discussing Cricket with a friend.

My friend, David, mentioned that my favourite team, KKR, made an absolutely baffling play, by releasing one of their best players, and immediately shelling out an obscenely high salary to win him back in the auction, which led to me looking over quite a bit of the data from the Auction, and who was bought by which team, retained, etc. Some of the data is completely useless, and some is very interesting, which is why I’m sharing it here. Honestly, even after all that data-crunching, I have no clear understanding of why KKR released Venkatesh Iyer and immediately spent so much to get him back, but I have a few ideas.

How the IPL Mega Auction Works

To my VERY Novice understanding, the IPL Mega Auction is a triennial event, having last taken place in 2022. It’s designed to restructure teams to their very core, and in some ways re-level the playing field between teams if some teams hold an insurmountable competitive advantage.

The Rules, as far as I understand them, is that every Team would have an available “purse” of ₹120 cr (₹1.2 billion / ~$20 million CAD) to spend on the players for their team. The IPL has a max-players limit of 25 players per team. Of the players that each team had last year, they could Retain up to six players, keeping those players completely off the auction floor. Of those 6, only 5 could be “capped” players (meaning they’ve represented their country internationally), and only 2 could be “uncapped” (haven’t represented internationally yet).

Of the Max-5 Capped Retained Players, the salary slab was set at 18-14-11-18-14. This means that, If a team retained a single Capped player, they would have a minimum of ₹18 cr (₹180,000,000 / ~$3,000,000 CAD) removed from their purse. If that player was being paid more than ₹18 cr, then their actual salary would be subtracted. For the Max-2 Uncapped Retained Players, the salary slab was simply 4-4. As an example of the minimum retention cost, my team, KKR, retained 4 capped players. Therefore, for those 4 players, they had ₹ 61 cr (18+14+11+18 c) removed from their purse, even though the combined salaries of those players was only 49 crore. No team went over-slab with their picks for Retained Capped Players. Several teams had Capped Players being paid more or less than the suggested amount from the Salary Slab, but besides KKR & DC, every team’s total Retained-Capped Players purse matched the total minimum that would be deducted from their purse. Two teams had extra money deducted from their purses for going over-slab for Uncapped players: PBKS (Punjab Kings) & RCB (Royal Challengers Bangalore). PBKS retained only two players, both Uncapped, and while Prabhsimran Singh was paid the standard ₹ 4 cr, Shashank Singh’s salary is a little higher, at ₹ 5.5 cr. RCB retained 3 players; 2 Capped & 1 Uncapped. For the two capped players, Virat Kohli is getting ₹ 21 cr, which is above the Slab, and Rajat Patidar is making ₹ 11 cr, which is below Slab, however the total Capped-player-slab for two Capped players is ₹ 32 cr. RCB’s capped players do reach there exactly. Their 3rd Retained player, Yash Dayal, is uncapped, and being paid ₹ 5 cr.

The effects of KKR and DC being under-slab is that they’re paying out a total of less than the Salary Cap. KKR had ₹ 61 cr removed from their purse for players who are only getting ₹ 49 cr (a difference of ₹ 12 cr), and DC had ₹ 43 cr removed for 3 players who are only getting ₹ 39.75 cr (a difference of ₹ 3.25 cr). Every other team had the total amount they are paying their retained players deducted from their purse.

If a team chose NOT to Retain 6 players, they would get as many RTM (Right to Match) cards as unfilled Retention spots (i.e. Delhi Capitals retained only 4 players, so they received 2 RTM cards).

To use an RTM card, a team had to first be bidding on a player that was on their team last Season. What the RTM card allowed them to do in that case was to match the present highest bid, and win the auction. Obviously, another team could still raise the bid again, but this allowed the teams with RTM cards to save a bit of money on players who would effectively be being returned back to where they started the Auction from.

The Data

I spent like 5 hours crunching these numbers, so here’s some of the data I gathered, some calculations I ran, and some interpretation, to boot.

Retention

The team that spent the least Rupees on Retaining players was PBKS, who retained only 2 players, both of whom were uncapped, for a total of ₹ 9.5 cr. The Rajasthan Royals (RR) spent the most on Retentions, retaining 5 Capped players & 1 Uncapped player, at a total cost of ₹ 79 cr. Across the 10 teams, the Average spent on Retention was ₹ 54.33 cr. However, the average amount removed from purses (due to DC & KKR under-spending) was ₹ 55.85 cr. A total of 46 players were retained, of which 34 were Capped & 12 Uncapped. That represents 76.67% overall Retention rate compared to the maximum possible, a 68% Retention rate of Capped players compared to the maximum possible, and a 60% Retention rate of Uncapped players compared to the maximum possible.

KKR & RR retained the most players, keeping 6 each. KKR retained one fewer Capped players than RR, choosing to take a second Uncapped player, while RR kept all 5 of their allowed Capped Players. Both the Mumbai Indians (MI) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) both kept 5 Capped players & no Uncapped players, being the only teams without a Retained Uncapped player. PBKS was the only team not to retain a single Capped player.

The average cost per Retained player to the teams was ₹ 11.81 cr (~$2,000,000 CAD). MI & SRH both spent ₹ 15 cr / per player (~$2,500,000 CD), the highest in the league. Unsurprisingly, given that they retained only 2, Uncapped players, PBKS had the lowest average cost, spending only ₹ 4.75 cr / player (~$790,000 CAD). The only other team to have an average cost of below ₹ 10 cr / player was KKR, with ₹ 9.5 cr / player (~$1,600,000 CAD). However, factoring in the money they didn’t spend but still don’t get to use on other players, their average raises to ₹ 11.50 cr / player (~$1,900,000 CAD).

RTM

8 teams had the ability to use at least 1 RTM card during the Auction (KKR & RR Retained 6 players). Of those 8 teams, only SRH didn’t buy at least 1 player using an RTM card. The only team to succesfully buy 2 players with RTM cards was DC. The average amount spent on a player bought using an RTM card was ₹ 5.94 cr (~$990,000 CAD). The most spent on a player using an RTM card was by PBKS, who spent ₹ 18 cr (~$3,000,000 CAD) to keep Arshdeep Singh for another season. The least amount spent on a player using an RTM was by RCB, who spent ₹ 0.5 cr (~$84,000 CAD) on Swapnil Singh.

General Auction

The Team that bought the most players during the general auction (which includes the RTM Purchases) was PBKS, who bought 23 players (including 1 RTM purchase) during the auction. On the other side of the spectrum, RR bought only 14 players. A total of 182 players were bought at the auction, out of a total of 228 players (79.82%).

Salary

Excluding players bought using RTM, the average price for a Player bought in the General Auction was ₹ 3.4 cr (~$570,000 CAD). The starting bid (and therefore the lowest price any player was bought at) was ₹ 0.3 cr (~$50,000 CAD). 46 players were bought at this price, accounting for 20.18% of all Players who presently set to compete in the IPL next Season. The overall average salary across all 228 Players currently set to be in the IPL next season is ₹ 5.19 cr (~$870,000 CAD). This average is rather skewed by several high earners, as exactly 2/3 of the players (152) are set to earn less than the average salary. However, the wage gap is closer than in the rest of reality, as the top 2.63% (6 players) of earners are being paid a mere 10% of the League’s total Salary Cap. Those six together earn ₹ 120 cr, which is about $20 Million CAD.

KKR, explain.

My team, KKR, chose to retain 6 players – Rinku Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, and Harshit Rana. Among the players from our championship-winning team that we didn’t retain were Phil Salt (averaged 39.55 runs, total of 435, 2024), Varun Chakaravarthy (#2 Bowler in IPL, 21 wickets in 15 matches, 2024), Shreyas Iyer (Captain, averaged 39 runs, total of 351, 2024), and Venkatesh Iyer (averaged 46.25 runs, total of 370, 2024). Now, obviously the team couldn’t retain them all, that’s the whole point of the Mega Auction, but some of the choices and actions around who got retained and let go is a little bit odd. The main one being, of course, Venkatesh Iyer.

Venkatesh Iyer, a Capped All-Rounder, looks poised to take the Captaincy of KKR (or so I’m told, I’m not sure how someone can just look like that), now that Shreyas Iyer (no relation) has been bought by PBKS (for an eye-watering ₹ 26.75 cr, roughly $4.5 Million CAD). However, despite nominally being an All-Rounder, Iyer bowled only one over last year, which is rather low. So it wasn’t all that surprising that KKR released him ahead of the auction, and chose not to keep him. Depending on the angle, it could be either a good or bad choice, but sometimes that’s the way the sport works, is that good players have to be released because you have too many good players (A really horrible situation absolutely no team wants to be in). BUT, then in a twist nobody saw coming, they refused to exit the bidding war over Iyer, and ended up spending a baffling ₹ 23.75 cr (~$3,950,000 CAD) on what many people considered to be a relatively standard player.

The real question is why he would go for such a high price, not why KKR would want him. KKR won the Title last year, and via their 6 Retentions, and by winning Venkatesh Iyer, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, and Vaibhav Arora in the Auction, they will return to 2025 with 9 out of the 11 players who won the Title Match. Keeping that many of what was ideally their strongest core team is obviously good, but spending almost half of the purse they walked into the auction with is a baffingly weird decision.

I’m sure there’s a VERY good reason for why KKR bid almost $4 Million for a player that THEY had just let go to auction, but I’m not really sure. I think the most likely option is that KKR Leadership actually wanted him more some of the players they chose to Retain, but believed those players (I’m not sure who) would be more expensive to win back than Iyer. Believing that, they would’ve released Iyer, and suddenly were forced into an unexpected situation when RCB & LSG began a bidding war over him. They really did want to keep Iyer, so they were forced into paying an obscene amount for him, completely undermining the original purpose of releasing him. However, with the focus that KKR put on retaining their core group of Knights from last season, I wonder if the same situation wouldn’t have also happened if they’d chosen to release a different member of the core team. So the point of the ₹ 23.75 cr might have not been so much about Iyer himself as the General Core team. The average they spent on those 9 players is still only ₹ 9.39 cr (~$1,600,000 CAD), so despite one major outlier, it still might seem like a decent deal for the team as a whole.

However, that’s literally entirely speculation, and I don’t even know that much about the team or the sport. Anyways, Thanks David for teaching me the actual rules of Cricket today, and setting me off on a 8-hour Research Journey into the IPL Mega Auction 2025. =)

Sources:

Citation details:
Author: Jabic Feser
Page Title: IPL Mega Auction 2025 - Data Observations
Site Name: Jabic - 
Link: https://balkavanians.com/ipl-mega-auction-2025-data-observations/
Date Published (DMY): 06/12/2024
Last Updated (DMY): 26/01/2025
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