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Alliance Center for
Intellectual Property Rights


FROM STADIUMS TO STREAMING: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY BEHIND IPL 2025

June 1, 2025

*Ms. Kandukuri Lakshmi Priya

INTRODUCTION

Cricket is not just a game; it is an investment of billions. Every year, the Indian Premier League (IPL) brings together several cricketers, attracting millions of audiences worldwide, and has emerged as a huge commercial activity. The game begins with player auctions, and the league builds an empire with the most valuable brands, generating millions in revenue through broadcasting, merchandising, sponsorship, and innovation.

The commercialisation of the sports industry has brought forth the importance of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regime in protecting the interests of the organiser, players, and sponsors. However, this rise of the sports industry also induced complex legal challenges, including ambush marketing, trademark infringement, and disputes over broadcasting rights, among others. In this context, IPR plays a crucial role in maintaining brand exclusivity, preventing unauthorised exploitation, and protecting the logos, slogans, live streaming, and player endorsements in the digital era of IPL 2025. In this blog, an analysis of the IPL and IP protection, its legal challenges, and recent developments is provided to emphasise the importance of IPR in the modern sports industry.

INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE

IPL started in the year 2008 and consisted of 8 teams; now it consists of 10 teams with the top-most players from around the world. The league has gained huge popularity and success, bagging an audience across regions. The brand value of IPL has significantly increased with franchising, merchandising, and sponsorships, now standing at a value of $12 billion. In various activities, the IP is involved and comes into play to protect the interests of the organisers, players, and others.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

The role of Intellectual property in the sports industry has significantly evolved, and in the modern day plays a crucial role. In IPL, several brands, their logos, team names, slogans, and taglines are used by the teams. As the league has a huge audience, the copyright over the television or the OTT broadcast has been subject to IP protection. The league has also utilised patents to protect technologies and processes such as the ‘Spidercam’ technology and the ‘Super over’ format. Nevertheless, the complex legal challenges surrounded the IP rights of the League, especially in the digital era, where copying and reproducing is a cakewalk. Some of the important IPs are discussed to underscore the intersection of IPR and IPL.

A. Trademark protection- comparative advertising and ambush marketing

By trademark protection, the logos, names, and taglines of the teams are protected from unauthorised use. A trademark is a mark that can distinguish the goods and services from others. The team names, slogans, taglines, emblems, etc., hold commercial value and are elements of merchandising and branding. Any unauthorised use of the same is trademark infringement and impacts the brand value. The use of the trademarked material is regulated by the licensing mechanism. However, ambush marketing has emerged as a strategy used by brands to benefit from the association with the event. In the 2023 IPL, fans were prohibited from entering the Eden Gardens stadium since they were wearing Mohun Bagan jerseys with the intent to prevent ambushing and creating confusion in the minds of the consumers as to IPL affiliation. Advertising is also an important component of the branding process in IPL. In the recent case of RCB v Uber, Uber launched an ad campaign wherein the name of RCB was used as “royally challenges”. Royal Challengers filed a case in the Delhi High Court for trademark infringement, alleging disparagement and dilution. However, the court found that the ad campaign is not disparaging to RCB. The court stated that the ad did not make any false claim or mention RCB as ‘bad’ in any sense, and rejected the interim injunction as claimed by RCB, drawing a line between parody and free speech.

B. Copyright protection, broadcasting rights, and digital piracy

Copyright protects literary, artistic, dramatic, musical works, and cinematograph films. Additionally, performers’ rights and broadcasting rights, as neighbouring rights to copyright, have emerged with the changing needs. Cricket is a performance, and the players, umpires are the performers having the right to broadcast their performance and communicate to the public. In IPL, the broadcasting rights are granted for both the television rights and the digital rights. For the IPL 2025, Disney Star retained the broadcasting rights of TV from 2023-27, while the digital rights were granted to Viacom18, and the official streaming partner is JioHotstar. While the exclusive rights of broadcasting the league were granted to the entertainment giants, many rogue websites were used for unauthorised streaming of the matches and were involved in piracy. In March 2025, a dynamic injunction was passed by the Delhi High Court against the rogue websites illegally streaming the IPL matches, which infringe upon the broadcasting rights enshrined under Section. 14 of the Copyright Act, along with sections 51 and 63 of the Act. Despite the orders by the court, every year new websites and telegram channels have been emerging, which illegally stream IPL, and digital piracy has become a huge task to be handled by the organisers and the broadcasting partners. These can be effectively tackled using take-down notices, site blocking orders, and AI-driven detection of illegal streams.

C. Personality Rights

The cricketers are not just players; they have become personal brands. The association of the players’ images, voices, names, and signatures is significant in ads and merchandising. The use of personality traits, though not directly addressed by any law, is currently protected by tort and the privacy law. Further, the unauthorised use and player endorsements raise IP concerns especially when it involves commercial use and causes consumer confusion. Cricketers like Gautam Gambir and Yuvraj Sigh have sued others for infringement of their personality rights. Looking at the above incidents of infringements, protection of other key players such as Virat Kohli and M S Dhoni with the intersection of IP law specifically, trademark and copyright law becomes very crucial as it may eventually tarnish their personality right which may have a grievous effect.

D. Merchandising and Counterfeit Goods

“Most of the IPL revenue is generated through the merchandising arm of IPL, through which there is the sale of official jerseys, caps, team flags and collectables. With the growing popularity of the league, there has been a surge in counterfeit products, both offline and online. The unauthorised sellers have created knockoffs of the original products and are infringing on the trademark and design rights. In the digital era, new challenges have arisen with NFTs and unofficial digital collectables. Though the efforts to curb the infringing goods have been taken up through cease-and-desist notices, takedown requests and legal actions of infringement, counterfeit goods can be curbed by strengthening on-ground enforcement and building consumer awareness of official licensing.”

CONCLUSION

In the modern era, with advanced technology, new challenges have emerged in almost every sphere. It is also clear that IPL is not just a cricketing event; it is an empire built on intellectual property. From the team names, logos, to streaming and merchandising, IP governs every aspect of the commercial success of the league. With the IPL 2025 showing not just the thrilling cricket matches but also the technology, global branding influence and digital expansion, the importance of IP, including trademark, copyright, designs and patents, continues to grow. However, the complex challenges of digital piracy, ambush marketing, digital counterfeits and collectables need to be addressed properly for the overall success of the league and to maintain its commercial value. In the years to come, the success of the league will not only depend on the runs scored in the field but also on the effective utilisation of the IP law and the legal victories off the field.

REFERENCES

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Author:
* Ms. Kandukuri Lakshmi Priya
4th Year, B.A. LL.B. IPR (Hons.) Student, Alliance University, Bengaluru.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of the Alliance Centre for Intellectual Property Rights (ACIPR) and the Centre does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.