How to Set Base Prices for Cricket Auction Players (2026 Guide)

Setting the right base prices is the single most underrated decision in a cricket auction. Get it right and bidding flows, budgets last, and every franchise ends up with a balanced squad. Get it wrong and you'll either watch half your pool go unsold or see teams blow their entire purse on the first three names called.

This guide walks through exactly how to set base prices — whether you're running an IPL mock draft with friends, a college fest tournament, or a corporate league with players you've never met.

What Is a Base Price in a Cricket Auction?

The base price is the minimum amount a team must bid to buy a player. It's the opening number the auctioneer calls out. If no team matches it, the player goes UNSOLD — they can be brought back in a later round or assigned at base price at the end of the auction.

Base price does two jobs at the same time:

• It signals quality — a higher base price tells franchises this is a marquee player worth spending on.
• It paces the auction — realistic base prices keep bidding wars for star names short and predictable, so you don't run out of money for the middle tier.

The IPL-Style Tier System (and Why It Works)

The IPL sorts players into discrete base price tiers — typically something like 2 Cr, 1.5 Cr, 1 Cr, 75L, 50L, 30L, and 20L. This works because it forces honesty. Players pick the tier they're willing to go in at, knowing a higher base price means higher risk of going unsold.

For your league, you don't need seven tiers. Three or four is plenty:

• Marquee / Tier 1: the 10–15% of players who are the clear standouts. Highest base price.
• Premium / Tier 2: strong, proven contributors. Medium-high base.
• Regular / Tier 3: the bulk of the pool. Low base — just above the minimum allowed bid.
• Uncapped / Tier 4 (optional): untested or first-timers. Lowest base, sometimes a flat entry price.

If you're running a tiered auction on MyAuctionVerse, you can also run each tier as a separate round — all Tier 1 players go under the hammer first, then Tier 2, and so on. That's covered in the complete cricket auction rules guide.

How to Choose a Base Price Strategy for Your League

The right approach depends on who your players are. Here are the three most common scenarios:

Scenario 1: Fantasy League With Real IPL / Pro Players

You're running a mock draft and your pool is real pros — Kohli, Bumrah, Maxwell, etc. Use tiered base prices that mirror the actual IPL model. This is the easiest scenario because the tiers already exist in fans' minds.

• Tier 1 (marquee): 2 Cr — international captains, world-class match-winners (8–12 players max).
• Tier 2 (premium): 1.5 Cr — established internationals and IPL regulars.
• Tier 3 (regular): 75L — solid domestic / support players.
• Tier 4 (uncapped): 20L — rookies and untested names.

Rule of thumb: no more than 15% of your pool in Tier 1. If everyone's a marquee player, bidding wars burn too much budget too early.

Scenario 2: College Fest or Corporate Tournament

Your players are classmates, colleagues, or community members — some known, some unknown. Use a hybrid approach: let players self-categorize based on skill and experience.

A model that works well:

• A-grade (captain / star): players with tournament or club experience. 1000 points base (whatever your currency).
• B-grade (regular): players who've played organized matches but aren't captains. 500 points.
• C-grade (beginner): anyone else. 100 points.

Make the grade-selection self-declared at signup. People are surprisingly honest — nobody wants the shame of going unsold at 1000 when they could have sold at 100.

More on running this kind of auction in the college fest and corporate tournament guide.

Scenario 3: You Don't Know the Players At All

You're running an auction for a community event and signups are open. Use a flat base price for everyone — say 100 points. This keeps the auction fair even when you have no data on who the good players are, and lets the actual bidding discover value.

Optionally, after signups close, manually bump 10–15 players up a tier if you can identify obvious standouts (e.g., a former district-level cricketer signed up). But keep the default flat.

The Math: Making Base Prices Fit Your Budget

Base prices only work if the numbers add up. Here's the sanity check every organizer should do before locking in tiers.

Rule: the sum of all base prices for a full squad must be at most 40–60% of a team's starting budget. That leaves enough room for bidding wars on the players teams actually want.

Example — 8 teams, 100 Cr budget each, 18-player squads:

• Total players needed: 8 × 18 = 144.
• If your average base price across the pool is 40L, a full squad costs 18 × 40L = 7.2 Cr at base. That's only 7.2% of the budget — too low, bidding wars will dominate.
• If your average base is 3 Cr, a full squad costs 54 Cr — 54% of the budget. That's about right; teams have headroom but also have to spend carefully.

A quick heuristic: (average base price) × (squad size) should land between 40% and 60% of the team budget.

Common Base Price Mistakes

Bases Set Too High

You'll see this in leagues that try to mirror the real IPL without adjusting for a smaller budget. Half the pool goes unsold, franchises finish with empty roster slots, and the post-auction unsold round becomes longer than the main auction.

Fix: if more than 25–30% of players go unsold, your Tier 1 and Tier 2 bases are too high. Drop them by 30–40% next time.

Bases Set Too Low

The opposite problem: every player sells instantly at base, budgets barely move, and the last few teams still have 80% of their purse when the auction ends. Not fun.

Fix: raise Tier 3 and Tier 4 bases. Especially for the middle of your pool — that's where most players sit, and it's where the auction feels alive.

Too Many Tiers

Seven tiers looks organized on paper, but in practice it slows the auction and confuses teams. Three or four tiers is the sweet spot.

Base Prices That Ignore Role

Bowlers and wicketkeepers often need higher base prices than batters because the role pool is smaller — teams MUST buy 4–5 bowlers, so those players have natural scarcity. Factor role supply/demand into your tiers.

Quick Reference: Base Price Ratios

If you're stuck, these ratios work for most formats. Numbers are proportional, so scale to whatever currency and budget you use.

• Tier 1 : Tier 2 : Tier 3 : Tier 4 = 10 : 7 : 3 : 1
• E.g., 2 Cr / 1.5 Cr / 60L / 20L, or 1000 / 700 / 300 / 100 points.
• Pool distribution: 10–15% Tier 1, 20–25% Tier 2, 45–55% Tier 3, 15–20% Tier 4.

Testing Your Base Prices Before Draft Night

Base prices are never right on the first try. That's what mock auctions are for. Run one practice auction with the same pool and budgets a few days before the real event. If bidding feels off — too many unsolds, budgets running out too fast, or nobody fighting over the mid-tier — you have time to rebalance.

Rebalancing Mid-Auction

Sometimes you'll realize mid-auction that your base prices are wrong. If the first 10 Tier 1 players have all gone unsold, something is off. Most platforms (including MyAuctionVerse) let you edit a player's base price before they come to the block, so you can drop the remaining Tier 1 bases on the fly without killing the auction.

The safer alternative: finish the current round, then run an unsold round where unsold players are reoffered at a lower base.

Putting It All Together

The shortest version of this entire guide:

1. Pick 3–4 tiers, not 7.
2. Keep your tier ratios around 10 : 7 : 3 : 1 and your pool skewed toward the middle tiers.
3. Aim for (average base) × (squad size) = 40–60% of team budget.
4. For unknown players, go flat and let bidding discover value.
5. Run a mock auction first. Rebalance. Then go live.