WIPL 2023 Dates, Teams & Media Rights Announced

BCCI is finally going ahead with the plan of introducing Women’s IPL which has been under a lot of talks for the last 14 months or so. WIPL 2023 will be the inaugural edition of Women’s IPL which will definitely help Women’s Cricket in India to grow even more. Last month, BCCI also announced the same match fees for both Men’s and Women and now the introduction of WIPL shows things are getting very serious for the expansion of Women’s cricket in India. 

WIPL 2023 Schedule Date

According to different media sources, it has been revealed that WIPL 2023 will be played in the month of March just after the conclusion of the Women’s T20 World Cup which is to be played in South Africa. The tentative dates for WIPL 2023 schedule are from 3rd March 2023 to 26th March 2023 which will be ended before the Men’s IPL 2023 starts in April. 

WIPL 2023 Team Names

BCCI has formulated two plans and presented them to the board of directors and state associations to decide which plan works best for them. The participation of franchises will be different than the model which is currently used for the Men’s team and initially, BCCI had presented a plan to sell teams based on six zones all across India. WIPL 2023 will have five franchises that will compete against each other and a total of 22 matches will be played. The unofficial franchises in WIPL 2023 are as follows.

• Dharamsala/Jammu (North zone)
• Pune/Rajkot (West)
• Indore/Nagpur/Raipur (Central)
• Ranchi/Cuttack (East)
• Kochi/Visakhapatnam (South)
• Guwahati (North-East)

In the coming weeks, BCCI will have a final say related to the franchises names and rights and then they will be sold off just like the Men’s IPL rights. There is already huge interest from business tycoons in India to jump on WIPL 2023 and purchase the franchise rights as soon as it is available. It is expected to see franchises who already own teams in Men’s IPL will also earn the rights in WIPL 2023. 

WIPL Possible Venues

Insider news is BCCI might go with a unique model for each franchise do not have a solid home venue but the games are to be played on six iconic cricket stadiums in India as neutrals. In this model as per the initial plan shared by the BCCI, WIPL 2023 is scheduled to be played at:

• Ahmedabad
• Bengaluru
• Chennai
• Delhi
• Kolkata
• Mumbai 

Exciting days ahead for Women’s cricket because the Indian Premier League has completely changed how T20 cricket is played and followed all around the world after the introduction of Men’s IPL 15 years ago. WIPL will definitely set high standards and benchmarks to follow for the whole world and we might see many more Women’s Cricket leagues being introduced all around the world. 

Will WIPL 2023 have an Auction of a Draft?

The decision of having an auction or draft will be an interesting and difficult one to make for the BCCI because they want to make sure of the availability of overseas players for the inaugural edition of Women’s IPL. Pakistan Cricket Board has also announced its own Women’s PSL (WPSL) which is scheduled to have a final played on March 18th, 2023. PCB is yet to release the final plan for the inaugural edition of WPSL which is expected to come out in a few weeks’ time. 

Women’s IPL Media Rights Tender

The Board of Control for Cricket in India has announced a tender for the interested parties to submit their bids for five years of broadcasting rights from 2023 to 2027. The last date for submitting bids for the tender is December 31, 2022, but the media sources have confirmed that the bids will stay open till January, 8th 2023. For WIPL, they have decided to go with the closed-bid process rather than e-auction and there is no base price set either by the BCCI for all three categories which include Television, Digital & both combined.