The Indian Premier League (IPL), officially Vivo Indian Premier League for sponsorship reasons, is a professional Twenty20 cricket league in India contested during April and May of every year by teams representing Indian cities. The league was founded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 2007 and is regarded as the brainchild of Lalit Modi, the founder and former commissioner of the league.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 IPL in 2017 was US$5.3 billion, according to Duff & Phelps.According to BCCI, the 2015 IPL season contributed ₹11.5 billion (US$182 million) to the GDP of the Indian economy.

The current IPL title holders are the Mumbai Indians, who won the 2017 season.

Prize money

The 2015 season of the IPL offered a total prize money of ₹40 crore (US$6.1 million), with the winning team netting ₹15 crore (US$2.3 million). The first and second runners up received 10 and 7.5 crores, respectively, with the fourth placed team also winning 7.5 crores. The others teams are not awarded any prize money. The IPL rules mandate that half of the prize money must be distributed among the players.

Rules

IPL games utilise television timeouts and hence there is no time limit in which teams must complete their innings. However, a penalty may be imposed if the umpires find teams misusing this privilege. Each team is given a two-and-a-half-minute "strategic timeout" during each innings; one must be taken by the bowling team between the ends of the 6th and 9th overs, and one by the batting team between the ends of the 13th and 16th overs.