The Indian Premier League’s 2026 season debuts this weekend and with it will come a cavalcade of coverage that will extend wire-to-wire for the competition. As the second most valuable sports league in the world and a massive driver of financial and cultural interest towards the game of cricket (already the second most popular sport in the world behind soccer) from an innumerable amount of (more established) outfits around the world and maybe even from us. In preparing for what’s on the content horizon (and trying to contextualize what I’m getting myself into) I’ve found that perhaps the most refreshing thing about reading up on the league¹ is the lack of constant consternation over things that plague American sports talk, specifically with regards to the topics of “load management” and “tanking”.

There are other issues with the IPL, of course, like “shadow banning” players of certain ethnicities and the safety of spectators in stadiums following last year’s tragedy in Bangalore. But we’ve covered those in previous newsletters, and I’ve sworn to myself that I’m not going to make this week’s edition about mass death or the geopolitical nightmares we are all living through as we are fed into the insatiable gaping maw of the military-industrial complex.

Instead, we’ll focus on fun stuff, like labor rights and the shrinking of the middle class amid the rise of oligarchy. And for that, we’ll need to start with something that, at least nominally, splits the difference: tanking.

Now, when I started writing this, I said to myself “Kyle², have you ever cared about tanking?” Turns out the answer is, in fact, no. To wit, going back through my personal archive, I was reminded that my first paid piece of writing was an article for BuzzFeed Sports³ entitled “The Astros' PR Plan Of Announcing They're Going To Be Terrible Is Working Surprisingly Well” which looked at their multi-step “process” of turning what had been a decent to occasionally great team into a perennial contender for World Series titles (and the center of the one cheating scandal in sports history that I actually find fault with, but that’s neither here nor there).

Tanking discourse hasn’t changed much since then⁴ — from The Process right on through whatever is happening this year in the NBA — although it has become fairly standard cannon fodder for sports channels that have to fill 6-10 hours of mid-day airtime while waiting for the games to start⁵. And they do so with a tone that would make anyone who stumbled upon it assume that it’s a plague which will be the death of modern sports if left unchecked. It is treated with the urgency of a fresh, new problem that needs to be addressed immediately, and in a way that realigns everyone’s incentives perfectly and forever.

This, of course, stands in stark contrast to the reality of the practice, which has essentially been a part of sports since the concept of codifying new player acquisition to promote parity became a thing. And it’s not something specific to any particular sport, as almost every one that employs any kind of structure predicated on awarding bad teams for poor play comes across it eventually. Which is probably why when I am forced to engage with it almost every year, from the same people in the breathless same way, in any argument I’ve ever seen, heard or read against it, there is really only one of two complaints that form its basic infrastructure:

Both, at first glance, seem like fairly reasonable critiques of professional teams in professional leagues with professional athletes — as, for any number of reasons, these criticisms simply don’t apply to the collegiate versions of the same sports — until you actually take the time to consider what each of those things presupposes.

Now, if you feel that way, I’m not going to sit here and go all “Rowdy” Roddy Piper on you. But for anyone even half paying attention, if your idea of “competitive integrity” can be damaged by the decisions of a single team or even a group of teams in the same situation, doing what should be considered by any neutral observer the correct “business decision”, you do deserve the full Anton Chigurh treatment:

Which is to say, that if a system provides long term benefits to those who are most willing to suck in the short term, and that is a problem for you, why not push to end that system? No matter how you feel about tanking, the concept of the draft — which is almost exclusively⁶ found in American sports leagues — and more specifically, draft order, based on “who was the worst last year?” is an idea that lends itself inherently to the kind of practice you are finding abhorrent. If providing nothing else of value, “trickle-down economics” has shown us over the last 40-plus years, rewarding (what I would consider) bad, anti-social behavior begets (what I would consider) bad, anti-social behavior.

But, even if you disagree with my assessment of the moral and society implications of incentivizing greed without also incentivizing effort, in the context of sports leagues, “not playing your best players when available in an attempt to secure equally good players down the road” is an equivalent in degree, if not kind, to “finding loopholes in the tax code to make sure you pay less of your income in taxes as CEO than your secretary does”.

There are legitimate⁷ reasons for both, though like all things, these are choices that have consequences, both intended and not. For drafts in particular, you could even say that the idea has a modicum of altruistic decency behind it, as it attempts to help teams down on their luck to be able to compete with those who are “more fortunate”. They have, to be fair, also worked significantly better than their precursors at achieving competitive balance even while encouraging what is then framed as “bad” behavior.⁸

First-year-player drafts came into vogue — technically the MLB did have one, but it was not for first-year players and was part of a completely different development structure — starting with the NFL’s draft in 1936, followed by the NBA’s in 1947 and then the NHL and MLB’s happening in the mid 60s.

Entire cottage industryies have developed around them, with downstream effects on things like college and high school recruiting websites, talk shows and publications all jockeying for position as the best places to find out who might eventually, at some point, possibly, contribute to your team in the future (maybe). Each of these drafts, to varying levels of success, have also become TV and content products unto themselves, which is, quite frankly, the main reason we’ll almost certainly never get rid of them.

Well, one of the main reasons. Another is that the alternative to drafts, which are auctions, are A) not as compelling television and B) the kind of thing that would increase labor costs for leagues for the long term in a way that they do not see as sustainable. Most leagues outside of the US, especially in cricket, use some kind of auction-based system as a means to redistribute both existing and new talent, as a way to maintain something resembling competitive balance, while also avoiding rewarding bad behavior. In fact, while they have their flaws, auctions actually promote and rewards things like “strong fiscal management” and “quality scouting” much more so than drafts, especially those with predetermined salary slots, could ever do.

So why not, just on a lark, even suggest something like an auction on one of these shows that spend so much time talking about the epidemic will consume leagues whole if they aren’t careful?

That’s because also one more reason that drafts stick around, and it involves a twist you might not be expecting. One that’s especially frustrating to deal with, because it requires leagues to completely ignore things like “easy” ways to deal with the main issue regarding drafts, that order is determined by how bad you are. If there was actual reason to prevent tanking, systems such as the “wheel” or one that awards teams eliminated from playoff contention with high draft positions based on how much winning they do after that happens (like the PWHL uses) could absolutely work, someone should probably mention it, no?

They won’t, of course, and it’s because television networks actually like the debates they get to have about tanking and the other kinds of behaviors that “worst to first” drafts incentivize more than the alternative. These “anti-tanking” conversations don’t just happen out of thin air or even organically: they are a function of the extremely troubling and increasingly incestuous relationships that sports leagues have with the primary broadcast partners.

TV pundits aren’t actually mad about the Jazz not playing good players, I promise you. They are being told by their bosses to pretend to be mad that each individual game in whatever massive rights package they’ve paid for is not equally valuable to all the others. But instead of creating a structure that may not provide as lucrative to them in the short term, they would rather publicly complain about the relationship in a way that feels less like legitimate grievances based on reason and more like getting mad that your spouse doesn’t load the dishwasher the way you want them to.

This is the reaping phases that comes from a system sown by American companies seeking massive total profit instead of trying to make each individual entity in a deal valuable. The tendency towards incredible long seasons has wreaked havoc on the ability of teams and players to properly manage when and where to play their best players, especially when the goal of a championship is out of reach or on the flip side, when teams that are looking to compete for a title engage in what has been called “load management” for much of the last decade.

The argument against load management, like the one you’ll hear repeatedly on tanking, is less about what they claim it to be — the poor family that can only afford one game a year and misses out on watching Kawhi Leonard live, laugh, love and play — and more about not being able to put the face of the most compelling stars in advertisements for the games.

What makes it worse, or at least more insidious than the tanking debate is the ways in which it is turned against players, who are then accused of being lazy or not caring, as opposed to people trying to maximize their availability for what the very same incentive structure has posited as the sole person of any player on any team: to win a championship after what’s clearly become a dangerously long season.

Both of these are not things that happen in IPL and it’s not because they are magic or perfect. It’s because the people in charge or the league are acutely aware that the idea that they are the second most valuable league in the world is predicated almost entirely on the idea that the games are exceedingly enriching to their broadcast partners on a per game basis.

Each individual IPL game is, within reason, a chance to turn a profit for all of the involved media and sponsorship partners because they avoid many of the tendencies towards self-cannibalization that can doom American TV rights deals from the start. The games almost all run on different days, and the ones that happen on the same day as another do so at a different time. They also don’t stretch out the season for the sake of maximizing profit in aggregate and the money that comes in for the entire league is then spread out amongst the relatively small number of teams.

Which, it needs to be noted, isn’t a function of a lack of interest in the game or places to put teams. I am sure any number of Indian cities that have populations over one million — roughly 50 as of the last census, as compared to between 10-13⁹ in the US — would be able to accommodate a new team if, say, New Orleans is able to do so. But it has been a deliberate choice by the league to reduce the financial requirements and burdens for games, travel and any number of other expenses for individual organizations to benefit the collective, while still remaining a relatively socialistic enterprise.

All of this — and, of course, the relatively low-risk nature of the game from a serious injury stand point — has created a structure where “load management” isn’t necessary, any more than tanking is. And they’ve managed to do all that while still growing the game at home, abroad and in such a way that does not prevent families from being able to see their favorite players when they go to their proverbial “one game a year”.

There are lessons to be learned in that, but if the ever increasing spread of cup and club championship proliferating in Europe is any indication, it seems unlikely one that will ever break containment from India, forever dooming us to a cycle of failed marriages between TV networks and increasingly sclerotic sports leagues crushing themselves under their own weight and wonky incentive structures.

But at least Stephen A. Smith will always have something to talk about when the Lakers segment is over.

Wednesday at 16:00 ET
Soccer: FIFA Series - US Virgin Islands v. American Samoa

The FIFA Series is a new-ish biennial tournament (started in 2024) that provides smaller nations the opportunity to play nations from other confederations (you follow all of that?). The 2026 version will take place during the March international window across several locations, so there will be multiple “winners”.  This match gets the pick since I am in full Dad-Mode and reading a book about WWII in the Pacific and just finished a chapter about American Samoa.

Thursday at 14:00 ET

Darts: PDC Premier League - Night 8

The halfway point of the Premier League Darts season means that the match-ups are based on the current position in the standings - 1 v. 8, 2 v. 7, 3 v. 6, and 4 v. 5.  This week is also being played in Berlin and should be fun to see how Luke Littler deals with a potentially harsh German crowd (in case you aren’t aware, he is not a fan)

Friday at 15:45 ET

Rugby: English Premiership - Newcastle v. Exeter Chiefs

I’ll be honest, I only realized within the last few weeks that the Newcastle club had been purchased by Red Bull.  Anyway, they’re in dead last with only five points from 10 games, so things seem to be going well.

Saturday at 14:00 ET

Lacrosse: NCAA Men - Syracuse v. Duke

#6 Duke travels to #5 Syracuse for a huge match-up and a potential preview for the playoffs.  Apparently the stadium is no longer called “The Carrier Dome”, which is honestly more shocking than the re-named Newcastle Red Bulls.

Sunday at 14:00 ET

Cricket: Women’s ODI - West Indies v. Australia

Our love of West Indies cricket naturally includes the women’s team.  As someone located in New York, I am very much looking forward to the nice weather.  The match is being played in St. Kitts and Nevis, so it is worth watching for the views alone and will make you consider whether Tom Cruise’s character in Cocktail may have been onto something with the bartending gig.

Monday at 10:00 ET

Cricket: Indian Premier League - Rajasthan Royals v. Chennai Super Kings

The cool thing about T20 leagues is that they have games almost every day of the tournament (I guess that’s the benefit of condensing an entire season into 1 to 2 months).  This is the first weekday game - so check it as we watch two teams, who apparently support monarchies, battle it out.

Tuesday at 19:30 ET

Soccer: US Open Cup 2nd Round - Charlotte Independence v. Charleston Battery

To be honest, I’m pretty upset that I can’t find a stream to the Thailand v. Turkmenistan match at 07:30 ET, but I will not give up!  In the meantime, enjoy a Carolina Derby match in one of my favorite soccer tournaments, the US Open Cup.