2024 Indian Premier League

The 2024 Indian Premier League was the 17th edition of the Indian Premier League. The tournament featured ten teams competing in 74 matches from 22 March to 26 May 2024. It was held across 13 cities in India, with Chennai hosting the opening ceremony and the final as the defending champions.
In the final, Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by 8 wickets to win their third IPL title.

Background

The Indian Premier League is a franchise Twenty20 cricket league held in India, organized by the Board of Control for Cricket in India. It is held annually since the first edition in 2008. Chennai Super Kings were the defending champions, having won their fifth title in the previous season after beating Gujarat Titans in the final.

Format

The format returned to the same as 2022, unlike 2023, with the group order being re-shuffled. Each team played twice against the teams in their group and the team in the same row in the other group, and once against the remaining four teams in the other group. After the group stage, the top four teams based on aggregate points qualified for the playoffs. In this stage, the top two teams competed with each other, as did the remaining two teams. While the winner of Qualifier 1 directly qualified for the final match, the losing team had another chance to qualify for the final match by competing against the winning team of the Eliminator match. The winner of this subsequent Qualifier 2 match advanced to the final match.

Group A	Group B
Mumbai Indians	Sunrisers Hyderabad
Kolkata Knight Riders	Royal Challengers Bengaluru
Rajasthan Royals	Punjab Kings
Delhi Capitals	Gujarat Titans
Lucknow Super Giants	Chennai Super Kings

Rule changes

Bowlers could now bowl two bouncers per over, as trialled in India's domestic T20 tournament, the 2023–24 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

Schedule

There was a possibility of the tournament being held abroad due to a possibility of inadequate security, as a result of a clash with Lok Sabha Election 2024. On 14 February 2024, the chairman of the Indian Premier League announced that the tournament would take place in India and that the schedule would be finalized after a discussion with the Indian government and other agencies, with the allocation of matches to states to depend on the election schedule to be released by the Election Commission of India. On 21 February, it was announced that the schedule would be announced in two halves as the dates of the elections has not been confirmed till then.
A part of the schedule of the season's fixtures was announced on 22 February 2024 which included the schedule for the first 17 days, consisting of 21 matches. The opening match of the tournament was to be played on 22 March at the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai between defending champions Chennai Super Kings and the Royal Challengers Bengaluru. The remaining fixtures were announced on 25 March with the last group match to be played between Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders on 19 May at ACA Stadium, Guwahati. It was announced that both Qualifier 1 and Eliminator would be played at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad from 21 to 22 May, and that Qualifier 2 and final would be played in Chennai, with the venue hosting its third IPL final after 2011 and 2012.

Marketing

The Tata Group renewed their contract as the title sponsors of the Indian Premier League for a tenure of 5 years for — the highest-ever sponsorship amount in the history of the league. The TATA Group previously held the title sponsorship rights for the IPL in 2022 and 2023. The advertising campaign for the 2024 IPL consisted of 18 sponsors and 250 advertisers including most notably — Dream11, Tata Motors, HDFC Bank, SBI, Thums Up, Pepsi, Parle Products, Google Pixel, Haier, and Vodafone.

Broadcasting

The media rights for 2023 to 2027 seasons were acquired by Viacom18 and Star Sports for, giving a valuation of for each IPL match. Star Sports broadcast the season on TV, while Viacom18 streamed it through JioCinema. Star Sports reported a 16.8 crore viewership on the opening day, highest-ever for the first day of any season. The 2024 IPL season had a total viewership of 546 million in Star Sports and 620 million in JioCinema, registering a 18% increase from the previous edition.

Teams

The same 10 teams from the previous season returned, with few changes to the team personnel.

Group	Team	2023 performance	Head coach	Captain
A	Delhi Capitals	9th	Ricky Ponting	Rishabh Pant
A	Kolkata Knight Riders	7th	Chandrakant Pandit	Shreyas Iyer
A	Lucknow Super Giants	4th	Justin Langer	KL Rahul
A	Mumbai Indians	3rd	Mark Boucher	Hardik Pandya
A	Rajasthan Royals	5th	Kumar Sangakkara	Sanju Samson
B	Chennai Super Kings	Champions	Stephen Fleming	Ruturaj Gaikwad
B	Gujarat Titans	Runner-up	Ashish Nehra	Shubman Gill
B	Punjab Kings	8th	Trevor Bayliss	Shikhar Dhawan
B	Royal Challengers Bengaluru	6th	Andy Flower	Faf du Plessis
B	Sunrisers Hyderabad	10th	Daniel Vettori	Pat Cummins

Personnel changes

The ten franchises retained 173 players for the 2024 IPL season, and seven players were traded across teams before the auction. On 11 December 2023, the IPL governing council released a list of 333 players, including 214 Indian and 119 foreign players who were available for the auction. The auction was held outside India for the first time, at the Coca-Cola Arena, Dubai, United Arab Emirates on 19 December 2023. 72 players were sold at the auction for a spend of including 30 overseas players. Mitchell Starc became the most expensive player in the history of IPL when he was bought by Kolkata Knight Riders for, surpassing paid by Sunrisers Hyderabad for Pat Cummins earlier in the same auction, and paid by Punjab Kings for Sam Curran in the 2023 auction.

Venues

The league stage was played at 13 stadiums across India. The opening match was played at M.A. Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai. Delhi Capitals played their first two home games at the ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium due to the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi being unavailable immediately after hosting the 2024 Women's Premier League. The ACA Cricket Stadium and the HPCA Cricket Stadium hosted two home matches each for Rajasthan Royals and Punjab Kings respectively. The first two matches of the playoffs were played in Ahmedabad with Chennai hosting the final leg of the playoffs including the final.

Opening ceremony

In January 2024, the BCCI invited bids for staging the opening ceremony. The following month, Kasi Viswanathan, the CEO of Chennai Super Kings stated that the opening ceremony would be held in Chennai by virtue of being the home of the defending champions. The opening ceremony took place on 22 March at the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai and was followed by the opening match between Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
Actors Tiger Shroff and Akshay Kumar promoted and performed for a song sequence from their film Bade Miyan Chote Miyan. Singer Sonu Nigam delivered a rendition of "Vande Mataram", followed by A. R. Rahman and Mohit Chauhan's joint-performance of "Maa Tujhe Salaam", and solo performances of "Jai Ho" and "Masakali" respectively. Singer Neeti Mohan also performed at the event.