Over its decade long run, the Indian Premier League (“IPL“) has unwittingly helped shape jurisprudence in India, in a number of areas of law.
During this time, the IPL has developed a fairly complex relationship with the Law. Not only sports law, but other branches of law, including administrative law, arbitration law, contract law, corporate law and criminal law have been touched by the IPL.
The Indian judiciary has been forced to intervene and play the role of the “ultimate umpire”, whose decision has changed the governance structure of the BCCI.
Equally, the judiciary’s intervention has also led to the suspension of 2 franchises from the IPL for a 2 year period, while also aiding certain other franchises to seek remedies against certain actions of the BCCI. The judiciary’s intervention also led to the removal of some of the most powerful administrators that the game has ever known.
From the spot-fixing and betting scandal, has emerged a vibrant debate on whether sports betting ought to be legalized, with the Law Commission of India currently contemplating its position on this sensitive issue.
Which therefore leads us to ponder on the issue “Has Law Shaped the IPL or Has IPL shaped the Law?”. We suspect its a bit of both.
We are delighted to introduce our video series – “IPL and the Law”. We could choose no better day to launch this series than today, being the 10 year anniversary of the first ever IPL match!
Presenting Part 1 of “Has Law Shaped the IPL OR Has the IPL shaped the Law?”: Inception (2008-09)