How Does the IPL Auction Work? A Complete Guide for Cricket Fans

Every year, the IPL auction stops cricket fans in their tracks. Two days of bidding, ten franchises with billion-rupee budgets, and players getting bought for sums that look like phone numbers. It's drama, strategy, and sport rolled into one event — and it sets up the entire season that follows.

But how does the IPL auction actually work? Why do some players go for ₹20 crore while others go unsold? What's the difference between a mega auction and a mini auction? Why do teams "retain" players before bidding starts?

This guide explains the entire IPL auction process — the rules, the money, the strategy, and the moments — in plain language. By the end, you'll watch the next auction the way veteran fans do: spotting smart picks, calling out overpays, and predicting who'll set the franchise back five years.

What Is the IPL Auction?

The IPL auction is how the Indian Premier League's ten franchise teams build their squads. Instead of a fixed draft order, every team competes for every player by bidding against each other in a live, open auction. Each team has a fixed budget (called a "purse"), and the highest bidder wins the player.

Think of it like a high-stakes game show. A player is announced. The auctioneer calls a starting price. Franchises raise paddles to bid. Numbers climb — ₹2 crore, ₹4 crore, ₹8 crore. Eventually only one team is left standing, the hammer falls, and that player is sold.

It's the format that turned cricket player selection into television-grade entertainment. Other leagues around the world have copied it — the PSL, BBL, CPL, and SA20 all run their drafts in similar styles. But the IPL auction remains the gold standard.

The Two Types: Mega Auction vs Mini Auction

Not every IPL auction is the same. The league cycles between two formats, and the difference matters a lot.

Mega Auction (every 3 years)

A mega auction is a complete reset. Every franchise can release its entire squad, retain a small number of core players, and rebuild from scratch. Hundreds of players go into the pool. Bidding wars are intense because teams have full purses and need to fill 18-25 player slots each.

Mega auctions are the marquee event. They happen roughly every three seasons (most recently before IPL 2025) and they shape the league for the cycle that follows. New franchises also do their first mega auction when they enter the league — like Gujarat Titans and Lucknow Super Giants did in 2022.

Mini Auction (every other year)

A mini auction happens in the years between mega auctions. Teams keep most of their existing squad and only bid on a smaller pool to fill gaps. Far fewer players, smaller bidding wars, but every signing matters more because there are fewer slots and tighter budgets.

Think of the mega auction as building a house from scratch, and the mini auction as renovating a few rooms. Both reshape your team — just at different scales.

The Player Pool: Who's in the Auction?

Before the auction, the league publishes a list of players available to bid on. This pool typically contains 300-600 players for a mega auction, 200-400 for a mini auction. Players fall into a few important categories that determine how they're bid on.

Capped vs Uncapped Players

• Capped players have played international cricket for their national team — they've worn the Test, ODI, or T20I cap. They typically have higher base prices and attract bigger bids.
• Uncapped players haven't played international cricket. They're domestic players, emerging talents, or franchise specialists. Lower base prices, but huge upside if they break out.

Some of the most famous IPL discoveries — Hardik Pandya, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma — started as uncapped players bought for tiny sums.

Marquee Players

Each auction has a small group of "marquee" players — superstars who get auctioned first to set the tone. Think Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Pat Cummins, Jos Buttler. Marquee picks usually trigger the biggest bidding wars and most expensive signings of the auction.

Overseas Players

Each franchise can sign up to 8 overseas players in their squad but can only field 4 in their playing XI. This rule shapes bidding heavily — teams that already have 8 overseas players won't bid on more, no matter how cheap.

Retention

Before a mega auction, every franchise can "retain" up to a set number of players from their previous squad — often 5-6 players, with limits on how many can be capped, uncapped, or overseas. Retained players don't go into the auction pool. Their salary is deducted from the team's purse before bidding starts.

Retention is how franchises keep their core. CSK retaining MS Dhoni every cycle, MI retaining Rohit Sharma for years — these are retention decisions, not auction wins.

The Team Purse: How Much Money Do Teams Have?

Every franchise enters the auction with the same total purse — set by the BCCI. The figure climbs each cycle as the league grows. For IPL 2025 the purse was ₹120 crore per team. Mini auction purses are smaller because most of each team's budget is already committed to retained players.

How the Purse Gets Spent

• Retained player salaries are deducted first. If a team retains a player for ₹16 crore, that's ₹16 crore gone from the purse before they bid on anyone.
• Auction bids deduct from the remaining balance in real time. Win a player for ₹8 crore? That's ₹8 crore off your purse.
• Squad size limits mean teams can't sign just one or two stars and pocket the rest. Each franchise must field a minimum squad of 18 players (max 25), with at least a few from each role category.

The Strategic Tension

This is where strategy gets interesting. A team can blow ₹40 crore on one marquee player — but then they're stretched thin for the next 17 slots. Or they can spread their purse across many medium-tier players and end up with depth but no superstar. Every franchise wrestles with this tradeoff.

Some of the most celebrated auction performances have come from teams that resisted the temptation to splurge. Kolkata Knight Riders building the 2024 title-winning squad with disciplined mid-tier picks is a recent example.

Bidding Mechanics: How a Player Gets Sold

Once the auction starts, the format is the same for every player. Here's the step-by-step:

1. The auctioneer announces the player. Their name, role, country, and base price flash on screen.
2. Bidding opens at the base price. Players are assigned a base price (₹50 lakh, ₹1 crore, ₹1.5 crore, or ₹2 crore) based on their experience and past performances. Bidding can't start below this number.
3. Franchises raise paddles to bid. Each bid increases the price by a fixed increment (₹10 lakh in the early stages, ₹20 lakh higher up). Teams keep raising until only one is willing to go higher.
4. The auctioneer calls "going once, going twice..."If no team raises, the hammer falls. The last team to bid wins the player.
5. If no one bids at base price, the player goes unsold.They can return in an "accelerated round" later in the auction with a chance for franchises to pick them up at base price again.

This loop repeats hundreds of times across the two auction days. The running tally of each team's remaining purse is shown live, which is what creates the visible drama — teams running out of money mid-auction is one of the great spectator sports in modern cricket.

Right to Match (RTM): The Wildcard Mechanic

Right to Match cards are the most-discussed mechanic in IPL auctions. They give a franchise a second chance to keep a former player.

Before the auction, each team is given a small number of RTM cards (usually 2-3). Here's how an RTM works:

1. A player who used to be on your roster goes into the auction pool.
2. You let other teams bid on them. The bidding reaches, say, ₹6 crore to a rival franchise.
3. You can play your RTM card and match that ₹6 crore bid. The player is yours.
4. Sometimes the rules let the original bidder make a final increased bid (e.g., one more raise to ₹7 crore), which the RTM team can choose to match again or let go. Specifics vary year to year.

RTM cards exist because retention has limits. If a franchise has more core players than their retention slots allow, RTM gives them a backstop to keep some of those players. It's a strategic safety net — but it costs you the player's full auction price, not their previous salary.

How Auction Strategy Actually Works

The IPL auction looks chaotic, but every franchise comes in with a plan. The four most common approaches:

The Marquee Strategy

Spend big on one or two superstars early, then build the rest of the squad with budget picks and uncapped players. Risk: if your stars get injured or underperform, the entire season collapses. Example: Royal Challengers Bangalore historically going hard on Virat Kohli and building around him.

The Balanced Spread

Spread the budget evenly across reliable performers. No one player breaks the bank. The squad has depth, balanced roles, and no obvious weakness. Risk: no superstar to win you a knockout match single-handed. This is how Mumbai Indians won their early titles.

The Specialist Hunt

Identify a specific weakness and over-pay to fix it. Need a death bowler? Bid harder than anyone else for the best one. Need a finisher? Same. The premium is the cost of certainty in a specific role.

The Uncapped Gamble

Skip the marquee bidding wars entirely. Use scouting to identify domestic and uncapped players who are about to break out, sign them cheap, and reap the upside if even half of them deliver. Sunrisers Hyderabad has done this well in recent years.

Most franchises blend two or three of these strategies. The mark of a great auction is not just the players you sign — it's how well the squad fits together when you're done.

Memorable IPL Auction Moments

Some auction moments live in cricket folklore. They're also great examples of why the format produces such drama:

• Mitchell Starc's ₹24.75 crore signing (2024) — the most expensive IPL auction signing ever at the time, with KKR ending a six-year-long bidding gap on a global superstar.
• Pat Cummins to SRH for ₹20.50 crore (2024) — same auction, a captaincy-defining purchase that paid off when SRH made the final.
• Yuvraj Singh to Delhi Daredevils for ₹16 crore (2015)— the era-defining marquee buy that didn't pan out, often cited as a cautionary tale about overpaying for past glory.
• Krunal Pandya to MI for ₹2 crore as uncapped (2016)— the breakout uncapped pickup that became a regular India all-rounder.
• Mahendra Singh Dhoni unsold in 2008's first auction at base price — well, except CSK locked him up before the auction at $1.5 million, the highest price of that auction. Worth every rupee.

Want to Experience an Auction Yourself?

Reading about the IPL auction is one thing. Actually running one with your friends is something else entirely — and surprisingly, you can do exactly that, online, in about 30 minutes.

MyAuctionVerse is a free online platform that lets you host your own IPL-style auction with your group. Pick a franchise, set your purse, bid against your friends in real time, and assemble a squad. Live bidding, automatic budget tracking, IPL-style rules — the whole experience without a spreadsheet in sight.

Most people's first reaction after running their own auction is the same: this is way harder than the IPL teams make it look.Your purse runs out faster than you think. The marquee players you wanted go for double what you budgeted. Suddenly you're the GM making panic decisions in real time. It changes how you watch the actual IPL auction forever.

• See how to host your own cricket auction →
• Compare cricket auction software options →
• Step-by-step IPL mini auction guide for friend groups →
• Complete cricket auction rules for organizers →

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does the IPL auction last?

Mega auctions run across two full days, typically 8-10 hours each. Mini auctions are shorter — usually one day, around 6-8 hours. The live broadcast on Star Sports and JioCinema covers the entire event.

How is the IPL auction order decided?

Players are grouped into sets by role (batsmen set, fast bowlers set, all-rounders set, etc.) and reverse points-table order. Marquee players go first, followed by sets in a published sequence. Within each set, players are auctioned in alphabetical order or by category.

Can a team buy any player in the auction?

Almost. Teams need to follow squad composition rules — minimum players per role, maximum overseas players, total squad size — but otherwise any team can bid on any player in the pool. The exception is that teams that have used all their RTM cards and overseas slots may decline to bid on certain players.

What happens to unsold players?

Unsold players can return in an "accelerated round" later in the auction. Teams that still need to fill squad slots can pick them up at base price. Players who go through both rounds without being signed remain unsigned for the season — though they can sometimes be picked up later as injury replacements.

What's the most expensive IPL auction signing ever?

Records get broken almost every year. Mitchell Starc's ₹24.75 crore signing by KKR in the 2024 auction set a new high mark. Before that, the record was held by Sam Curran (₹18.5 crore in 2023). These numbers tend to climb each cycle.

Why do some star players go unsold?

It happens for a few reasons: their base price was set too high, every franchise had already filled their overseas quota by the time they came up, their recent form was poor, or their availability for the season was uncertain. An unsold star is rarely a comment on their ability — it's usually a market timing or roster fit issue.

How do retentions work in the mini auction?

Before a mini auction, teams don't do a full retention process — they simply keep most of their existing squad and release the players they don't want. The released players go into the mini auction pool, and teams use whatever purse they have left to bid on them plus other available players.

Can I host my own IPL-style auction with friends?

Yes — and it's easier than most fans realize. MyAuctionVerse is a free online platform built for exactly this. Pick teams, set budgets, build a player pool, and run a live auction in your browser. Your friends bid from their phones via shared links. Most groups finish a full IPL-style auction in 60-90 minutes.

Final Thoughts

The IPL auction is the rare sporting event that feels like a season in miniature. Two days of decisions that shape the next four months of cricket, played out live on television with billion-rupee stakes. Once you understand the rules — the purses, the retention math, the RTM cards, the role quotas — every bid tells a story.

The best way to truly understand the IPL auction is to host one yourself. Set up a mock auction with your friend group, manage a purse, watch your strategy unravel in real time, and feel the pressure the actual franchises feel. Trust us: after one auction with your friends, you'll watch the next IPL auction completely differently.

Start your free auction →