"I built the IPL in 18 months and lost it overnight": Inside Lalit Modi’s Rise and Fall

In 2008, India was bracing for a revolution in cricket — though most didn’t know it yet. The inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) exploded onto screens with a heady mix of Bollywood, business, and boundary-hitting bravado. At the center of this storm was one man: Lalit Modi, a marketing maverick, a risk-taker, and arguably the single most influential figure in reshaping cricket as entertainment.

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"If I hadn’t done it fast, someone would have killed it," Lalit Modi said years later, reflecting on how he jammed together global players, Indian billionaires, celebrity owners, and prime-time glitz — all in less than two years. The IPL wasn’t just a cricket tournament. It was cricket on steroids, wrapped in glamour, cheered by cheerleaders, and funded by billion-dollar broadcast deals. And Modi was its ringmaster.

At first, the cricketing world scoffed. Purists rolled their eyes at what seemed like the Bollywood-ification of a gentleman’s sport. But Modi was undeterred. He knew India loved drama — and he gave it in sixes, auctions, team rivalries, and last-over thrillers. The first player auction, where MS Dhoni was sold for $1.5 million, set the tone: this wasn’t just sport, it was high-stakes spectacle.

The early IPL was messy, loud, and relentlessly addictive. Modi was everywhere — announcing tie-ups, sealing deals, and tweeting late into the night. Under his stewardship, the league pulled in Sony as a broadcaster for over $1 billion, saw Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta jump in as owners, and created something Indian cricket had never dared before: a fully commercialized league that rivaled European football.

"Cricket needed a shake-up, and I gave it one," he once declared, unapologetic about the showmanship. And shake it he did. Modi introduced strategic time-outs (which were mocked but monetized), brought in foreign coaches, and used digital platforms way before sports leagues globally woke up to online streaming.

But with audacity came scrutiny. Questions around financial transparency, conflicts of interest, and political rivalry started creeping into headlines by the 2010 season. That year, as he stood on stage during the final — crowning Chennai Super Kings as champions — few knew it would be his last appearance as IPL Commissioner. Within weeks, Modi was suspended, facing investigations by the BCCI, the Indian government, and eventually exiling himself to London.

"I built the IPL in 18 months and lost it overnight," Modi told a British journalist in 2013. Whether villain or visionary, his legacy is undeniable. The IPL today is worth over $10 billion, watched in 100+ countries, and has become cricket’s most lucrative engine. Its format has been replicated globally, from Australia’s Big Bash to The Hundred in England.

Ask anyone who watched those early seasons, and there’s a nostalgia to it: the roaring crowds, the new team anthems, the Bollywood owners hugging players mid-match, the chaotic drama. Modi made cricket sexy — and chaotic.

Even his critics admit it: no Modi, no IPL. While the league has matured, turned more polished, and corporate-friendly, the original firebrand spirit of the IPL still echoes in every super over and record auction.

Today, Modi lives in London, occasionally dropping tweets about the league he fathered. While banned from cricket governance, he remains the architect of a sports revolution. As he once said: “The world laughed at me. But now they’re all trying to build what we already did.”