‘Television Was Left On, a Running Tap, from Morning till Night’: The Indian Premier League (IPL)

There is no sport without television. Television has become vital to the existence and sustenance of all sport, including cricket. This paper focuses on the broadcast technologies of television and the manner in which they have influenced the sport of cricket (specifically the Indian Premier League), the cricketer and the spectator. With the growing use of second and third screen devices, the idea of sport has become entrenched in a world of information and communication technologies. Televised cricket (and indeed all sport) provides a great channel for marketing, and also provides the stars of the game an enormous opportunity for individual celebrity, allowing it to become a most useful platform for promotion and advertising for several, sometimes unrelated, stakeholders. [Sporting Traditions Vol 33L No2, November 2016)