PSL's decline: From cricket's bright promise to bureaucratic mediocrity and franchise crisis

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published 2 weeks ago |  Dr. Nauman Niaz (TI)

Pakistan Super League battles mismanagement and franchise disputes as Ali Tareen confronts PCB, while IPL's Royal Challengers Bengaluru faces potential USD 2 billion sale amid cricket's commercial transformation.

Summary

ISLAMABAD — Let us turn back the reel, where the light first quivered upon the silver screen of imagination, and inquire, with a tenderness born of memory, how it all began. Once upon a time, the Pakistan Super League was not just a tournament but a tremor of promise, a bright, impetuous idea flung like a comet across the cricketing sky. It was the song of a terrorism ridden nation dreaming in colour, the laughter of cricket echoing through the dusk. And now, alas, the music falters. The star that once burned so audaciously trembles upon its weary axis, its light paling under the cold breath of bureaucracy and the dull corrosion of indifference. It was not meant to age so soon, nor to fade into that dreary half-light where mediocrity and habit make their home. 

Franchise Mismanagement and Lost Opportunities

Those entrusted with its keeping, the custodians, the franchise magnates, the stewards of its future, never quite understood that a league is not only a calendar of fixtures, but a living, breathing organism. They built no sanctuaries of permanence: no academies where young talent could ripen, no clubhouses humming with belonging, no cathedrals of their own to house the dream. Year after year, they slumbered through the seasons, rousing themselves only when the calendar's hand tapped impatiently at the door, half-awake, half-hearted, basting together spectacle without soul. Merchandise, membership, a culture of continuity, these were foreign notions to their drowsy enterprise.

When the easy currents of surrogate advertising dried up, so too did their zeal. And in the quiet that followed, the great idea that once luminous, now languid star seemed to sigh. For even the noblest ventures, if not nourished by imagination and care, must yield to entropy. Thus, the Pakistan Super League lingers, a magnificent beginning that lost its way, its promise trapped between what might have been and what is, its pulse faint but not yet still.

The Genesis: From Vision to Reality

I remember the first stirrings of the dream. Salman Safdar Butt, that insightful banker with a mind schooled in both numbers and nuance, had seen how cricket could be used as a lever to deepen corporate footprints, to make commerce waltz to the rhythm of enchanted crowd, pulsating moments, and massive hits all over the park. From his contemplations, the trail was picked from the Indian Cricket League, a brief comet that burned bright and vanished, and then to its reborn and imperial successor, the Indian Premier League, a revolution wrapped in colour, capital, and choreography.

Australia, too, showed a subtler model, a league owned by Cricket Australia, professional in governance, balanced in purpose. Out of these three currents, India's exuberance, Australia's order, and Pakistan's yearning drew the shimmering idea of a Pakistan Super League. By the time Najam Sethi, ever the intellectual with a journalist's wit and a lyricist's precision, began exploring the thought, the plan had shape. Najam, sharp-eyed, eloquent, ambitious in that fine, dangerous way of men who dare to dream, saw in the PSL not just a tournament, but a renaissance. One could almost sense the pulse of Lahore and Karachi beating in sync with the idea.

Broadcasting Rights Battle and Early Struggles

At the time, an offshore broadcaster, sleek and persuasive, had approached the PCB with a proposal: outsource the entire league, the organisation, the broadcast, the execution. Let the professionals build it, they said, and the PCB would hold the patent, the crown, the title. It was bold. It was sensible. It did not, alas, take root. The idea faltered somewhere between the drawing room and the boardroom, as so many Pakistani ideas do.

I recall those days vividly. I was then Director of Sports at PTV, though Sports Syndication rested with another colleague. The PCB, brimming with optimism, had announced the first edition of the PSL and put forth its rights for sale, seven to eight million US dollars, they said, a figure that seemed ambitious for a country then locked in isolation. It was an odd paradox: a nation unable to invite cricket home was taking its own domestic carnival abroad. The foreign broadcaster, once enamoured, grew disillusioned. He was also PTV's partner and mouthed counsel into the ears of our management: Do not buy it.

The Broadcast Rights Saga Continues

I remember standing against the surge, convinced that, even in failure, the PSL might become Pakistan's first modern sporting enterprise. I tried to persuade Mohammad Malick, then the Managing Director of PTV, to acquire the three-year rights. My words, though earnest, fell unheard. My voice, not yet as seasoned as the years would make it, could not break through the shield of bureaucracy. And so, when only two strong sports broadcasters remained, and a third had slipped into irrelevance, a Media House stepped in. It bought the rights, not with the passion of a sportsman but the cunning of a trader. For the PSL, it was salvation. For broadcasters, it was ruin. A sports channel, to survive, must build a cathedral of content, spend millions on daily slates that return only through patience and persistence. A media house, by contrast, treated sport as cargo: the broadcasters were carriers, and they made their fortune as middlemen.

Flush with profit, they bought the next three-year cycle at a price so high it glittered with hubris. Inevitably, they defaulted. By then, the PSL had grown from promise to product, a hugely successful brand, loved in drawing rooms and bazaars alike. The rights tumbled back to the broadcasters. A private channel, seeing gold in the dust, picked up the last two years at another astronomical number. Now, with the ten-year cycle spent and the imprint of ambition fading, the league stands at a precipice. If the six franchises are retained, a 25% premium will be added, pushing the broadcast valuation in Pakistan into the realm of the impossible, a figure no sponsor can touch, no economy can justify. And beneath all these numbers, another malaise hisses. From the seventh edition onward, the light began to fade. The league, once alive with craft and contest, began to move mechanically. The cricket grew pedestrian, the cast B-grade, the spirit, once soaring, grew earthbound. So it began: in ambition and foresight. So it now stands: in fatigue and neglect.

The Multan Sultans Controversy

And unless sense returns, unless profession replaces patronage, what began as a song may end as an echo, the Pakistan Super League, that grand experiment in hope, remembered not for what it achieved, but for what it failed to become. Let us turn the reel back to where the light first flickered, and ask, with a measure of tenderness, how it all began. The Pakistan Super League, once a bright, audacious idea, a young star in the cricketing firmament, now trembles on weary legs, its radiance dimmed by mismanagement and the slow corrosion of apathy. It was not meant to fade so early.

And unless sense returns, unless profession replaces patronage, what began as a song may end as an echo, the Pakistan Super League, that grand experiment in hope, remembered not for what it achieved, but for what it failed to become. It began, as these tempests so often do, with a letter, a dry parchment of power, weighted with implication. On the 12th day of September, 2025, the Pakistan Cricket Board dispatched its missive to Ali Tareen: a Letter of Charge, heavy with the language of reprimand. He answered, as a gentleman must, on the second of October, his reply measured, complete, and courteous. Then came silence. And silence, that most eloquent of responses, said more than any communiqué could.

PCB's Crisis of Professionalism

When inquisitive journalists sought clarity, the Board fumbled for truth. First came a claim, a Letter of Termination had been sent, they said. Then came the refusal to admit that Tareen had already replied. It was a small deceit, yes, but small deceits are often the heralds of larger decay. For the PCB, seemingly adrift between arrogance and confusion, looks to have lost the distinction between power and professionalism.

Since 2019, Multan Sultans have poured USD 43 million into the veins of Pakistan cricket, a river of money and faith, USD 6.35 million each year, the dearest of all franchises. Not underachievers, these Sultans, but victors of 2021, finalists three times hence, the proud bearers of Lodhran's dream. Under Tareen's stewardship, seven billion rupees have been breathed into the game's lungs through the Sultans, the Lodhran Cricket Academy, and the JDW team in the President's Trophy Grade II.

Institutional Paralysis and Stagnation

And yet, the PCB, that supposed custodian of cricket's covenant, remained mute. No dialogue, no courtesy, not even the decency of engagement. When institutions cease to speak, they begin to sue. Litigation is only the death rattle of understanding. Tareen's words, sharp-edged though they were, carried the ache of something larger, the lament of a nation watching its festival of light dim to a bureaucratic glow. His grievance was not vengeance; it was grief. The grief of one who had invested not merely capital, but conviction. Since the PSL final on May 19th, 2025, the machinery has stood idle. The next season lies unborn; its valuation report, handed to auditors months ago, gathers dust, waiting to determine the very worth of the league's soul. Title sponsors, media rights, digital partners, all wait upon a silence that feels more like abandonment than contemplation.

When the storm of criticism broke, the PSL did what brittle institutions do: it clutched the rulebook like a drowning man clutches driftwood. A Notice of Charge replaced a conversation. The message was unambiguous: dissent is a crime. Not a single meeting, formal or informal, has been held with the Multan Sultans. The promised PSL entity still lingers as a ghostly draft. Within its corridors, professionalism is but a rumour. Staff come and go like shadows; the CEO, once the COO, now presides over mediocrity made manifest. The Board, in its infinite irony, has proved its detractor right.

Declining Standards and Empty Stadiums

A decade gone, and what innovation? None. Once hailed as the second-best T20 league in the world, the PSL now drifts toward fifth, perhaps sixth; its stands empty and echoing. In Karachi, during the last season, the seats gaped like wounds. The absence of crowds was not a statistic; it was a requiem. True, Tareen's public act, tearing the legal notice on camera, was intemperate, a flourish more theatrical than wise. But passion, even when poorly expressed, is preferable to the apathy of clerks. His rebellion spoke of care; his defiance, of despair. What this feud requires is not punishment, but peace, for the league's very survival depends on it.

The Valuation Crisis and Franchise Fee Disparity

And yet, another storm brews. The forthcoming valuation will decide the next decade's destiny. By the cold reckoning of contracts, each franchise must pay 25% more, whether by the current rate or the market's decree, whichever cuts deeper. Here lies the absurdity:

Though one franchise pays sixfold another, all sip equally from the central revenue. A model not of equity, but of entropy.

Franchise Annual Fee (USD) Multan Sultans 6.3 million Karachi Kings 2.6 million Lahore Qalandars 2.5 million Peshawar Zalmi 1.6 million Islamabad United 1.5 million Quetta Gladiators 1.1 million

The numbers themselves are poesy, of imbalance, of faith betrayed. Multan pays for six, and six reap alike. Look eastward, and one sees contrast carved in gold. The IPL, that imperial enterprise, did not rise by accident. It was built by structure, fed by competence, and sustained by the rhythm of professionalism. Their subscriber base: half a billion souls. Pakistan could have fifty million, a tenth, yet enough to make cricket sing in our streets again. All that is required is competence. All that is missing is belief. The PSL does not lack passion; it lacks architects. It has builders without blueprints, dreamers without drafts. Until it finds men and women who can turn fervour into foundation, it will remain as it now stands, a tale of brilliance born and brilliance betrayed.

IPL's Royal Challengers Bengaluru Sale Speculation

It is not one empire, but two, twin citadels of the Indian Premier League now adrift upon the market's uncertain tide, their lanterns lifted high against the wind, each flame beckoning a buyer. The undertones began as they always do in cricket's underworld of rumour, softly, persistently and now they throb with life. Royal Challengers Bengaluru, that red-clad monument to unfulfilled promise, has become the loudest shriek in the room. Around it, the air thickens with speculation that another franchise, too, seeks not surrender but renewal: a sale not of pride, but of percentage, a concession to the rising cost of dream-making in an age where even cricket must count its coins.

Diageo's Dilemma and Potential Buyers

From the corridors of Mumbai's glass towers to the oak-paneled rooms of London's financial quarter, the talk is the same. Diageo Great Britain, a merchant of spirits, not of sentiment, grows restless. For it owns not just a team, but a heartbeat, and heartbeats are poor accountants. The shareholders hint that perhaps the time has come to let go; that passion, though noble, does not balance the books. Six suitors, perhaps more, linger in the wings, awaiting Diageo's nod like bidders at a celestial auction. Yet the British are cautious traders of sentiment; they have changed their minds before. Across the subcontinent, the inheritors of patience, heirs to centuries of waiting, watch and wait again.

Potential Suitors: Poonawalla, Jindal, and Adani

But conversations have begun. They hum across time zones and oceans, in Pune, Delhi, and New York. Possibilities are being drafted upon notepads still warm from the boardroom's light. Among those names drift familiar titans: Adar Poonawalla of the Serum Institute, Parth Jindal of JSW, and the restless Adani, each a merchant of ambition, each attuned to the sound of opportunity knocking with a leather ball. The Poonawalla name has long hovered near cricket's flame. Once, when the IPL expanded its dominion in 2010, Adar's father Cyrus, nearly seized a franchise before fate handed the scrolls to Sahara and Rendezvous, names now faint in the league's memory. And Adar, modern in his candour, has already placed his thought upon the public square of X: "At the right valuation, @RCBTweets is a great team…"

The ellipsis lingered like smoke after applause. It spoke more than his sentence dared. Insiders believe he may seek an alliance with American capital, a transoceanic distich of commerce and cricket. The Jindal house, already half-enshrined within the Delhi Capitals, contemplates a shuffle of assets. And Adani, who once reached for Ahmedabad and found the prize denied, waits still, his ambition undimmed, his empire hungry for a franchise to match its scale.

The USD 2 Billion Valuation Question

Yet the real oracle of this tale is the valuation that fickle god of modern sport, half prophet, half illusionist. Diageo's ask, they say, is USD 2 billion, a sum both majestic and absurd. Is a cricket team worth so much gold? The answer lies not in the scoreboard but in the satellites: in the media rights that bind passion to profit.

In this new kingdom, the duopoly of Star and Jio has fused, and from their union emerges a colossus, JioStar, with half a billion subscribers. A modest levy, a hundred rupees a month, would turn devotion into dynasty: INR 50 billion monthly, USD 2.3 billion each season, USD 10 billion across five years, before even the advertisers have stirred. The arithmetic glows with promise; yet behind the digits lies the old question: can sport survive when its poetry is priced?

Two great banks, Citi among them, now shepherd Diageo's deliberations. But within the Indian subsidiary, reluctance reigns. For there are those who know that once a team is sold, a part of its soul leaves with it. Recently, emissaries from India travelled to London, seeking clarity or perhaps consolation.

A Call for PSL's Redemption Through Professionalism

And yet, valuation is not the only ghost haunting this story. Thus the tale halts, balanced upon a breath between commerce and conscience, between the gleam of possibility and the gravity of grief. In the weeks to come, the fog may lift. Perhaps RCB shall find new keepers; perhaps Diageo, heart over ledger, shall cling to it still. In India, the IPL is never only an enterprise. It is not an investment but an inheritance, not a business but a belonging. It is emotion in escrow, passion under contract, and somewhere between billion-dollar valuations and deserted terraces, the soul of cricket still hums softly, waiting to be heard once more.

And across the border, where the Indus flows quietly under the same moon that watches over Bengaluru and Mumbai, another league dreams in silence. The Pakistan Super League, once a bright syllable in cricket's chorus, now waits for its second awakening, not in lament, but in labour. For the PSL's redemption will not arrive on the wings of rhetoric or nostalgia. It will come in ledgers balanced and visions measured, in process, not passion alone; in professionals, not patrons; in the quiet industry of men and women who see beyond vanity to viability. It must be rebuilt as a cathedral of competence: its arches drawn by planners, its foundation laid by pragmatists. Let its future architects speak less of glory and more of governance; let them draft blueprints, not manifestos.

For the PSL can still rise, not as an imitation, but as an independent creed of cricket: sharper, humbler, more self-assured. To compete with the giants, it must learn their grammar, systems that breathe efficiency, marketing that sings clarity, and leadership that serves not ego but ecosystem. Give it a mind as meticulous as its heart is fierce, and watch it bloom again, its fields alive with colour, its stands alight with song, its name whispered once more across continents not as promise, but as proof.

There is still time. The embers of brilliance have not gone cold; they merely wait for hands that know how to stir them. If only the Board could look beyond its paper and its pride, if only it could entrust this league to those who build, not merely inherit, then perhaps the PSL, too, might reclaim its music. And the world, hearing that sound from Pakistan once more, that mingling of craft and chaos, of rhythm and risk, might remember that cricket, even now, belongs to those who tend it, not those who own it. For in the end, every league, like every innings, demands its virtues: patience, precision, and a touch of grace. And somewhere, beyond the noise of balance sheets and egos, the game itself, eternal, forgiving, and vast, still waits, ready to begin again.

Dr. Nauman Niaz is a civil award winner (Tamagha-i-Imtiaz) in Sports Broadcasting & Journalism, and is the sports editor at JournalismPakistan.com. He is a regular cricket correspondent, having covered 54 tours and three ICC World Cups, and having written over 3500 articles. He has authored 15 books and is the official historian of Pakistan Cricket (Fluctuating Fortunes IV Volumes - 2005). His signature show, Game On Hai, has been the highest in ratings and acclaim.

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