Mint reported two new IPL teams by 2028, and the BCCI says a 12-team league is not in its scope
BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia says the board has not discussed taking the IPL to 12 teams, and no decision has been made on raising the purse before the 16 December auction.
Nov 12, 2026
“We have neither discussed formally nor informally the possibility of the IPL becoming a 12-team affair in 2028,” Devajit Saikia told PTI. “It is not in our scope at this stage.”
The BCCI secretary did not stop there. He called the reports of two new franchises “speculative reports from some fertile minds” and said “there is no sanctity to those reports”. The board’s attention, he said, is on the 2027 season, which will be the IPL’s 20th.
What Mint reported
The expansion story came from Mint, which reported that the BCCI was in very early talks about adding two teams in time for the next media rights cycle, with Pune and Vadodara the likely cities. The private equity firm Permira was named as one interested party, along with sovereign wealth funds from West Asia, and each new team was expected to be valued at more than $1 billion.
On paper the timing made sense. The current media rights deal, sold for ₹48,390 crore in June 2022, covers the 2023 to 2027 seasons, so 2028 is the first year of whatever comes next.
The last expansion shows how much money is on the table. In October 2021 the BCCI sold two teams for a combined ₹12,715 crore. The RPSG Group paid ₹7,090 crore for Lucknow and CVC Capital ₹5,625 crore for Ahmedabad, against a base price of ₹2,000 crore, and the IPL went from eight teams to ten in 2022.
Pune would not be new to the league either. Pune Warriors India played from 2011 to 2013, and Rising Pune Supergiant, owned by the same Goenka group that later bought Lucknow, played in 2016 and 2017 while Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals were suspended.
No decision on the purse
Saikia also dismissed talk of a bigger purse. There had been reports of a rise to ₹150 crore. “There is nothing of that sort regarding an increase in the salary purse,” he said.
The auction on 16 December will not be a mega auction. Saikia said it “will be the last year of the cycle” and that the board would “take a call” after that, with the next mega auction due next year.
He would not be drawn on Juhi Chawla’s idea of moving the IPL to January either. “We are concerned about hosting the 2027 IPL, which is going to start in March 2027,” he said.
None of this rules out a 12-team IPL for good, and Saikia was careful to say “at this stage”. But the auction in Goa on 16 December is for ten teams, and none of them has been told the purse will go up.