Most Expensive IPL Player Ever: Pant's Rs 27 Crore Record & Every Mega Bid

IPL Guide · Researched guide · Updated 26 October 2026

The record: Rishabh Pant, Rs 27 crore

The most expensive player in IPL auction history is Rishabh Pant. At the 2025 mega auction, Lucknow Super Giants paid Rs 27 crore for the Indian wicketkeeper-batter — a fee that smashed a record that had been broken twice in the previous year's auction alone. Pant combined the three things franchises pay premiums for: he keeps wicket, he bats in the top order with a left-hander's angle, and he captains. LSG made him their captain and the face of the franchise.

To feel the scale: in 2008, the first IPL auction's biggest price was about $1.5 million for MS Dhoni. Less than two decades later, the top bid had grown roughly eighteen-fold. Media-rights money rebuilt the league's economics, and the auction is where that money becomes theatre.

Second and third: Iyer and Green

Shreyas Iyer sits second at Rs 26.75 crore, bought by Punjab Kings in the same 2025 mega auction and immediately made captain — a decision vindicated when he led PBKS to the 2025 final. Third is the overseas record: Cameron Green at Rs 25.20 crore to Kolkata Knight Riders at the 2026 mini-auction in Abu Dhabi, surpassing Mitchell Starc's Rs 24.75 crore.

Green's deal carries the auction's most interesting footnote. Under the BCCI's maximum-fee rule for mini-auctions, an overseas player's salary is capped at Rs 18 crore (the highest retention slab). KKR's bid stands as the official record, Green receives Rs 18 crore, and the Rs 7.20 crore surplus goes to the BCCI for player welfare and development. The rule exists to stop overseas players skipping mega auctions to chase inflated mini-auction prices.

How the record kept falling: 2023–2025

The modern bidding wars began in earnest at the 2023 auction, where Sam Curran (Rs 18.50 crore, Punjab Kings), Cameron Green (Rs 17.50 crore, Mumbai Indians) and Ben Stokes (Rs 16.25 crore, Chennai Super Kings) all broke the old mark in a single day. The 2024 auction then produced a double record in one afternoon: Pat Cummins went to Sunrisers Hyderabad for Rs 20.50 crore, and hours later KKR paid Rs 24.75 crore for Mitchell Starc.

The 2025 mega auction — where every squad is rebuilt from near-scratch and purses are at their largest — was always going to top that. Pant and Iyer both cleared Starc within the same event, and the pair now sit clear at the top of the all-time list.

Retentions are not auction buys

One number often confuses these lists: Heinrich Klaasen's Rs 23 crore at Sunrisers Hyderabad. That was a retention fee ahead of the 2025 mega auction, not an auction bid, so it does not belong in the auction record table — though it remains the highest amount attached to a retained overseas player. Retentions are negotiated within the BCCI's slab system; auction prices are set by open bidding, which is why auction records carry their own table on this site.

The distinction matters for 2027: mini-auction years mix small purses with retention-heavy squads, so giant bids are rarer — which makes Green's Rs 25.20 crore in a mini-auction cycle all the more striking.

The uncapped record and what it signals

At the 2026 auction, Chennai Super Kings paid Rs 14.20 crore for Prashant Veer, setting the record for an uncapped player. A decade ago, uncapped Indians were squad fillers bought near base price. Today, franchises scout domestic T20 leagues relentlessly, and a teenage all-rounder with verified domestic numbers can command a fee bigger than established internationals once fetched.

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi's rise at Rajasthan Royals — Orange Cap winner in 2026 with 776 runs and a record 72 sixes in a season — is the extreme proof of the model: the cheapest contracts in the league can produce its most valuable seasons.

Do record buys actually perform?

The honest answer is mixed, which is what makes the auction a gamble rather than a shopping list. Starc justified KKR's record in 2024 by delivering in the playoffs of a title season. Iyer captained Punjab to a final. Pant's LSG, by contrast, finished seventh in the 2026 league table — a reminder that one superstar cannot carry a squad game. Green's KKR season and the 2027 mini-auction will add the next chapters.

What the data does show: the very biggest fees cluster on players who offer two skills or a scarce skill — wicketkeeper-batters, left-arm quicks, elite all-rounders. Scarcity, not fame, is what franchises pay for.

What happens at the IPL 2027 auction

The 2027 mini-auction is reported for 16 December 2026 at ITC Grand Goa — the last auction of the current cycle before the next mega auction. Expect released high-value players to test the market, but do not expect Pant's record to fall: mini-auction purses are a fraction of mega-auction purses, and the overseas salary cap further cools bidding wars.

Our auction hub tracks the build-up: reported purses, retention and release lists as franchises announce them, and the rules in full. Every figure there is sourced; anything unconfirmed is marked PENDING instead of rounded into a rumour.

The 2008 baseline: how cheap the first stars were

The inaugural 2008 auction looks like a different sport. MS Dhoni, the most sought-after player in the pool, went to Chennai for about $1.5 million — the ceiling of that market. The entire eight-franchise auction raised $723.59 million, a figure that stunned cricket at the time and now reads as modest: a single modern mega auction moves comparable money for players alone. Andrew Symonds, Ishant Sharma and a teenage Rohit Sharma were among the era's headline buys, all at prices that would not crack today's top fifty.

The growth curve tracks the league's media rights. Each new broadcast cycle enlarged the purse, and each purse enlargement concentrated on the scarcest skills. The record progression — Dhoni's 2008 mark, Yuvraj Singh's Rs 16 crore in 2015, Chris Morris and Ben Stokes in the Rs 16.25 crore era, then the 2023–2025 explosion — is really a graph of television money meeting a fixed supply of elite T20 talent.

Why wicketkeepers and all-rounders dominate the list

Look down the all-time table and a pattern jumps out: Pant (keeper-batter-captain), Iyer (top-order captain), Green and Curran and Stokes (all-rounders), Pooran and Klaasen-adjacent keepers, specialist fast bowlers Starc and Cummins. There is almost no pure batter and no pure spinner in the top bracket. Franchises pay for option value: a player who fills two team-sheet lines, or who removes a structural weakness, is worth two single-skill stars.

The keeper premium is the sharpest. An Indian wicketkeeper who bats top-four is the rarest commodity in the system — which is why Pant's record may survive several auction cycles, and why Sanju Samson's trade to CSK, rather than any auction lot, might be the most significant squad move of the 2027 cycle.

Mega auctions vs mini-auctions: where records are made

Eight of the top fees in history were set at mega auctions or the auctions immediately around them, and that is no accident. Mega auctions hand every team a near-full purse simultaneously, with dozens of starting-XI slots to fill — maximum money chasing maximum demand. Mini-auctions invert it: small purses, few slots, but occasional desperation bidding when a scarce role hits the block, which is how Cameron Green's Rs 25.20 crore happened in a mini-auction year.

For 2027, the structure argues against a new record: it is a mini-auction, purses will be modest after retentions, and the overseas cap compresses foreign bidding. The realistic drama is in the Rs 8–15 crore band — released Indian internationals and one or two overseas names — and in the uncapped market that Prashant Veer's Rs 14.20 crore just repriced.

What a record fee does to a player

The price tag follows a player into every innings. Pant's first LSG season was judged against Rs 27 crore, not against other keepers; Starc's early 2024 games were read as a KKR crisis until his playoff performances rewrote the verdict in a fortnight. Analysts now track 'value above replacement' informally, but dressing rooms mostly ask a simpler question: does the big buy win you the two or three games a season that separate fourth from seventh?

By that test the recent record buys split honestly: Iyer delivered a final, Starc delivered a title, Curran's Punjab years were productive without a trophy, and Pant's LSG finished seventh in 2026. The fee buys probability, not certainty — the most expensive lesson in the IPL, relearned every December.

The full record progression, year by year

The cleanest way to read the market is through its record-holders in order: Dhoni set the 2008 ceiling at roughly $1.5 million; Yuvraj Singh's Rs 16 crore in 2015 stood for years as the Indian benchmark; Chris Morris and Ben Stokes nudged the mark to Rs 16.25 crore in the early 2020s; then 2023 detonated it three times in a day (Curran 18.50, Green 17.50 in the same auction window), 2024 twice more (Cummins 20.50, Starc 24.75), and 2025 twice again (Iyer 26.75, Pant 27.00). Five record breaks in three auctions is not inflation — it is a rights-fuelled land grab for a fixed pool of prime-age stars.

Note who never appears: the very biggest fees avoid players over 30 and players with one skill. Every record-holder since 2015 was either under 28 at purchase or a multi-role cricketer. Franchises have learned to buy prime years, not reputations — the market's sophistication is the real story behind the headline numbers.

How the fee is actually paid

An auction price is an annual salary commitment within the purse, not a transfer fee to another club — the player was a free agent in the pool. Contracts typically run for the cycle (with the franchise holding the player until the next mega auction unless released or traded), and the amount counts against the team's purse each season at the bid value, subject to the rules of that cycle. For overseas mini-auction buys, the maximum-fee rule splits the bid: salary up to Rs 18 crore to the player, surplus to the BCCI's welfare fund.

This structure explains a subtlety fans miss: releasing an expensive player before a mini-auction does not just free his salary — it can be the only way to fund a rebuild at all. When you read that a franchise is 'considering releasing' a big name before December 2026, it is purse engineering, not necessarily a judgement on the player's form.

The record table in one view

Pant 27.00 (LSG, 2025). Iyer 26.75 (PBKS, 2025). Green 25.20 (KKR, 2026). Starc 24.75 (KKR, 2024). Cummins 20.50 (SRH, 2024). Curran 18.50 (PBKS, 2023). Green again 17.50 (MI, 2023). Stokes 16.25 (CSK, 2023). Morris 16.25 (RR, 2021). Pooran 16.00 (LSG, 2023). Yuvraj 16.00 (Delhi, 2015). Ishan Kishan 15.25 (MI, 2022). And the uncapped benchmark: Prashant Veer 14.20 (CSK, 2026). All figures in crore rupees, all set by open auction bidding.

Two franchises appear again and again at the sharp end — KKR and the Punjab franchise — and one pattern never breaks: nobody's record survives a mega auction. Circle the next mega auction, expected after this cycle, as the day Pant's mark comes under genuine threat.

Sources and where to verify this yourself

Auction prices in this guide are the widely reported figures verified against ESPNcricinfo-grade auction coverage and specialist auction records (including the Jagran Josh and IPLDaily record tables), with the maximum-fee rule as stated in BCCI auction regulations reporting. Keep exploring: the auction hub carries the same table with per-team context, and the auction explainer guide covers how the bidding that produced these numbers actually works.

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