During a rare peek into the sporting body’s finances, India’s cricket board earned a $1.5 billion surplus in the five years to 2021-22, the country’s parliament heard.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) does not usually reveal detailed financial information.
However, because of India’s fervent love of the game and recurrent bidding wars for broadcast rights, it is reputed to be one of the world’s most lucrative regulatory organizations.
On Tuesday, a government minister detailed recent BCCI earnings before parliament, revealing revenue of $919 million and expenditure of $370 million for the fiscal year ending March 2022, leaving a $549 million surplus.
It was the board’s largest surplus in the five years from 2017-18, with earnings of $3.3 billion and expenses of $1.8 billion over the same period.
Due to their outsized wealth in comparison to other national cricket boards, the all-powerful BCCI is sometimes believed to call the decisions in world cricket.
According to ESPN Cricinfo, the BCCI stands to earn around $230 million per year between 2024 and 2027, or 38.5 percent of the International Cricket Council’s annual earnings of $600 million.
The BCCI sold the media rights to the hugely popular Indian Premier League Twenty20 game for a record $6.2 billion last year.
The board recently issued a bidding for media rights to its international and domestic matches, which is expected to bring in another large sum.
