ROI analysis of the 5 highest paid players in IPL 2016

The 9th season of the IPL has come to an end, and Sunrisers Hyderabad have been crowned champions of this edition. This is their first IPL title and they truly deserved the victory as they beat the tournament favourites RCB on their home ground at the Chinnaswamy in Bengaluru.

It has been a rather different IPL season, where two new franchise teams – Rising Pune Supergiants and Gujarat Lions – were inducted into the IPL on account of Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals being suspended for two years. The venues of some of the matches had to be shifted from Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur midway through the tournament following the High Court’s orders in light of the acute water crisis in the state of Maharashtra.

The auctions at the beginning of the IPL season were a pretty busy affair, with players from CSK and RR being shifted to other franchise teams. Virat Kohli was the highest paid player this season with RCB retaining him for a whopping 12.5 crore, but they paid him an additional 2.5 crore. The other four highest paid cricketers were MS Dhoni, Shikhar Dhawan who were paid 12.5 crores each, and Rohit Sharma who was retained for 12.5 crores but got 11.5 crores as salary.

Last but not the least Gautam Gambhir was also retained for 12.5 crores but was paid a salary of 10 crores as per the agreement between the player and the franchise.

Here, we take a look at the performances of these five most expensive IPL players of 2016. Coincidently all of them are Indians and barring Dhawan, all are captains of their respective franchise teams.

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#1 Virat Kohli – 15 crores

RCB had retained Kohli as their star performer before the auctions earlier this year. The team had pinned their hopes on Kohli, who has been in red-hot form especially in T20s since the tour of Australia at the beginning of the year. Kohli repaid the faith and responsibility bestowed upon him by the RCB management and was simply outstanding to say the least.

He scored 973 runs in 16 matches – the highest tally by a batsman in a single season in the history of the IPL. But it is not just the sheer volume of runs which Kohli scored, but also the manner in which he has scored them that makes his achievements all the more incredible.

Kohli scored four centuries in this season which again is an IPL record. The Delhi-born batsman all by himself scored 30% of the total runs scored by his franchise, which is staggering to say the least. It would not be entirely untoward to say that this season has belonged to the Indian Test team captain.

His performances have also overshadowed AB de Villiers’ tally of 687 runs, which in itself is an incredible feat. Kohli looked really hungry for the IPL title which has eluded RCB so far.

Kohli looked hungry for the IPL title which eluded RCB in the final. Kohli also contributed immensely to the brand value of RCB bringing in eyeballs to the stadium thereby subsequently having an incremental impact on merchandise sales.

Chinnaswamy Stadium	RCB with Kohli	RCB without Kohli	Impact of Kohli
Seating capacity	30000	24000	6000
Avg ticket price	2000	2000	2000
Total ticket revenue	6 crores	4.8 crores	1.2 crores
RCB total ticket revenue per match	4.8 crores	3.84 crores	96 lakhs
Note: assuming 20 % people come to watch RCB match primarily for Kohli, 80% of total ticket sales goes to the franchise.