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Potential of WPL to garner a scalable viewership is an uphill task: Elara Capital
Mumbai: The BCCI has raked in Rs 4,669.99 crore from franchise bidders for the Women’s Premier League. Adani Sportsline forked out the most amount at Rs 1,289 crore. Three of the winning bidders also own IPL franchises – Royal Challengers Sports (owners of Royal Challengers Bangalore), JSW GMR Cricket (owners of Delhi Capitals) and Indiawin Sports (owned by the Reliance Group, which also owns the IPL franchise Mumbai Indians).
This adds to the Rs 951 crore that the BCCI will get from Viacom 18, which had earlier gotten the broadcast rights for the league.
Elara Capital’s Karan Taurani said that this is a good initiative to target a larger audience pool by leveraging the strength of an existing franchise. “However, the potential of WPL to garner a scalable viewership is an uphill task, in our view, as it also may come around the prime time slot wherein women’s audiences are sticky about fiction-based shows and may move toward WPL, only if women cricketers become bigger stars in terms of name and fame.
“We valued men’s IPL teams at an average of Rs 85 billion based on 13-14x one-year forward sales. If we were to assign a 30 per cent lower valuation multiple for WPL, the fair value would be in the range of Rs 2.5-3 billion, which would move up in the long term, bolstered by its success and acceptance. WPL may be the next big thing for advertisers and team owners to target the female audience; however, its success and acceptance are in for the long haul.”
Taurani noted that United Spirits and other IPL men’s franchise teams have bought the Women’s Premier League (WPL) team for Rs 9.3 billion. “Valuation seems to be at a premium (30x forward EV/sales), given the below-par monetisation opportunity presented by the lower acceptance and popularity of women’s cricket in India. We believe this investment can pay rich dividends only in the long term, provided women’s cricket attracts a mass following in India.”
He noted that, on average, each team was sold for Rs 9.3 billion. This value is higher than the eight men’s IPL teams in CY08 when each team was sold for an average of Rs 5 billion. However, men’s cricket has always had a high recall and attracted a large audience compared to women’s, which is relatively new (the average reach of women’s cricket in India is a mere 20 million versus men’s IPL at 500 million). In terms of recent additions, two new teams (men’s IPL) were added at an average acquisition price of Rs 63.6 billion last year, which means WPL teams’ valuation is currently at 15 per cent of men’s IPL teams.
“In terms of media rights, WPL were sold for five years at Rs 9.5 billion, which is a mere 5% (based on Rs 200 billion – assuming fewer matches) of men’s at Rs 500 billion, if we were to compare it on a like-to-like basis, as WPL is slated to have less than half the number of matches of men’s IPL. In terms of per match cost, men’s IPL media rights were sold for Rs 1.25 billion, whereas WPL was at Rs 47 million (four per cent of men’s), assuming there will be 35-40 matches per season, given fewer number of teams. We believe the valuation of WPL teams is at a slight premium, as it stands at 15 per cent of men’s teams whereas media rights are a mere five per cent of men’s teams. Lower media rights revenue would limit the team’s revenue potential as the former accounts for 80 per cent of a men’s IPL team’s revenue.”
Triggers: UNSP already owns RCB, a men’s IPL team franchise, and it has paid Rs 9.05 billion to acquire a WPL team. Given media rights account for a lion’s share of IPL teams’ revenue, the UNSP WPL team may not have the potential to generate more than Rs 0.25-0.3 billion per year (media rights will account for 90% of revenue, as endorsements and ticket revenue may be significantly low for WPL initially), assuming the sharing ratio (largely 50:50) with BCCI is same as men’s IPL. This is well below the men’s IPL team, which was sold for Rs 5.1 billion in CY08 and able to post a revenue of Rs 1 billion in the first year itself.
“Hence, we believe UNSP has paid a premium price for acquiring a team in WPL, which has no recall as on now; however, the factors that work in the company’s favor are: 1) wider target audience to market its brands to women, and 2) an existing recall for RCB as a franchise, which augurs well for the overall branding for the women’s team. Given less revenue potential in the next five years, WNSP WPL team may only generate an ROCE of 13 per cent (annual investment of Rs 0.9 billion and PBT margin assumption of 40 per cent); however, ROCE would improve significantly in the medium to long term only if women’s IPL is accepted in a big way and if media rights revenue has a multiplier impact at the next round of auctions in CY28.”
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
