The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a professional Twenty20 cricket league in India usually contested between March and May of every year by eight teams representing eight different cities or states in India. The league was founded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 2007. The IPL has an exclusive window in ICC Future Tours Programme. The IPL is the most-attended cricket league in the world and in 2014 ranked sixth by average attendance among all sports leagues. In 2010, the IPL became the first sporting event in the world to be broadcast live on YouTube. The brand value of the IPL in 2019 was ₹475 billion (US$6.7 billion), according to Duff & Phelps. According to BCCI, the 2015 IPL season contributed ₹11.5 billion (US$160 million) to the GDP of the Indian economy. There have been thirteen seasons of the IPL tournament. The current IPL title holders are the Mumbai Indians, who won the 2020 season. The venue for the 2020 season was moved due to the COVID-19 pandemic and games were played in the United Arab Emirates.
A team can acquire players through any of the three ways: the annual player auction, trading players with other teams during the trading windows, and signing replacements for unavailable players. Players sign up for the auction and also set their base price, and are bought by the franchise that bids the highest for them. Unsold players at the auction are eligible to be signed up as replacement signings. In the trading windows, a player can only be traded with his consent, with the franchise paying the difference if any between the old and new contracts. If the new contract is worth more than the older one, the difference is shared between the player and the franchise selling the player. There are generally three trading windows—two before the auction and one after the auction but before the start of the tournament. Players cannot be traded outside the trading windows or during the tournament, whereas replacements can be signed before or during the tournament.
Some of the team composition rules (as of 2020 season) are as follows:
The 2019 season of the IPL offered a total prize money of ₹500 million (US$7.0 million), with the winning team netting ₹200 million (US$2.8 million). The first and second runners up received ₹125 million (US$1.8 million) and ₹87.5 million (US$1.2 million), respectively, with the fourth placed team also winning ₹87.5 million (US$1.2 million).