INDIA's cricket board earned a surplus of around $1.5 billion (£1.2bn) in the five years to 2021-22, the country's parliament heard during a rare look into the sporting body's finances.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) does not typically publish its finances in detail.
But it is known to be one of the world's most lucrative governing bodies thanks to India's diehard love of the game and periodic bidding wars over broadcast rights.
A government minister listed recent BCCI earnings in parliament on Tuesday (8) which revealed revenue of $919 million (£722m) and expenditure of $370m (£291m) for the year to March 2022, leaving a surplus of $549m (£431m)
It was the board's biggest surplus out of the five years from 2017-18, with earnings of $3.3bn (£2.6bn) and $1.8bn (£1.4bn) in expenses for the same period.
The all-powerful BCCI is often said to call the shots in world cricket due to their outsized wealth compared to other national cricket boards.
The BCCI also stands to earn approximately $230m (£181m) per year between 2024-27 -- or 38.5 per cent of the International Cricket Council's annual earnings of $600m (£471m), according to ESPN Cricinfo.
Last year, the BCCI sold its media rights for the wildly popular Indian Premier League Twenty20 tournament for a whopping $6.2bn (£4.9bn).
The board has recently floated a tender for media rights for its international and domestic matches which is set to reap another huge windfall.
(AFP)
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Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.