Gender and remuneration in professional franchise cricket: analysing outcomes of the 2023 Indian Premier League auctions

Abstract

The amount that players are paid in professional cricket is mostly derived from salary not, as in golf and tennis, from prize money and outside endorsements. Consequently, their pay is dependent on the remuneration system in operation which, in most cases, are administered set by their employers. Such prices embody severe gender inequalities with, for example, the lowest paid man being paid more than the highest paid woman in England’s iconic Hundred competition. In contrast, in the Women’s Premier League (WPL) and the Indian Premier League (IPL) auctions, prices are determined by the market with each player’s pay being determined by the highest bidder. From a detailed analysis of data from these two auctions for December 2022 (IPL) and March 2023, I show that the market system goes some way towards ameliorating the gender inequalities embedded in administered prices. After decomposing inequality in sale prices, I show that the main driver of inequality under these auctions was not gender but whether the candidates were domestic or overseas players.