Llorne Howell - Sports blogger Former cricket international for the Black Caps, Llorne Howell, gives his views on New Zealand's number one summer sport, both for the Bay and the national team.

The IPL is paying its stars the lowest percentage of revenue of any major professional sporting competition or event.
Payments to players in today's world are worked out upon the basis of a percentage of the money that comes in the door for the league, team or franchise.
In the good old days when Eden Park was filled with 50,000 spectators for an Auckland match, or an All Black test, the revenue was simply from the ticket sales.

50,000 people paying $1 each meant $50,000 to be split amongst the administrators, ground attendants, and finally the players. At the end of all these costs, amateur players may have had a few thousand to share amongst two teams from each big match. Hence the AB's were paid very little for the sterling job they did for the country.
Nowadays this has all changed. Revenue comes primarily from TV rights and is in hundreds of millions per year. Brands pay millions to be associated with a team or league and merchandising of the team kit can produce mega sums. Beckham's salary at the Galaxy was reportedly earned back very quickly from merchandise sales.
So how does one decide in this environment what the players are worth? What should the owners keep for themselves?
In American professional sport, players earn 60-70 per cent of the revenue. So $100 million brought in by the Dodgers would mean the players get to split $70 million.
In NZ sport the Black Caps receive about 25-30 per cent. So the players divvy up that amount on a pre-determined basis. The number one ranked player gets more than the number 20.
The AB's get a higher percentage of NZ Rugby's income; somewhere near 40 per cent - I have heard. Maybe this is because the world market is pretty intense for their services as the best players in the world and so the union is forced to shell out more.
However, in the burgeoning IPL league, the players are receiving only about 10 per cent of revenue.
If this increased to base international levels of 30 per cent Shane Bond would be getting NZ$3 million for his six weeks of work instead of NZ$1 million. If it went along American lines, he would get NZ$6-7 million.
The revenue streams are huge in the IPL. TV rights start the process. There are 100 brands associated with the league. Rights are with Youtube and the matches are on-sold to theatres throughout India.
So where is the money going? The owners of course. Why do you think they are so happy to put the money in and so happy watching matches from the sideline? They are making an absolute killing by extracting most of the revenue for themselves.
Would a players association ever develop in India to challenge the status quo as has happened in every major western cricketing country? Probably not in India. There is such an interlinked web between the players, administrators and politicians. The players here also earn such huge revenue from being associated with products. These deals can easily be redirected by a word in someone's ear by those in power. Each top player may have 8-12 deals with each in millions not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
However, the players association internationally could possibly band together to make a stance if they so desired. What would the league be without foreign stars after all? Simply they could, we will not play unless we receive 40 per cent of revenue that you generate off our reputations and the hard work for our countries over many years.