Nominal vs present value
Local display: $3.3m · Rebased to 2024 USD via US CPI-U
How the total breaks down
IPL auction fee. The single highest bid in IPL history to that point, breaking the ₹20 crore barrier for the first time.
Cricket Australia retainer & endorsements. A national contract and sponsor income earned alongside his single-season IPL deal.
Impact 85
- Set the IPL's all-time auction record, breaking the ₹20 crore barrier for the first time
- Confirmed a fast bowler could out-price any batsman in the league's auction room
- Held the record for barely a year before being surpassed at the very next mega-auction
Starc's ₹24.75 crore fee, alongside Pat Cummins's ₹20.5 crore on the same afternoon in Dubai, showed franchises would now pay more for a single season of an elite overseas bowler than most players earned across an entire international career. The record lasted barely twelve months before the 2025 mega-auction broke it again, confirming the IPL's price ceiling was still rising every cycle.
Starc's ₹24.75 crore (about $2.98 million) fee at the 2024 IPL auction broke the league's all-time record within the same session that Pat Cummins had briefly held it, the first time any bid had cleared ₹20 crore. It was a single-season fee, not a career total, but it captured exactly how far IPL auction economics had run ahead of even a World Cup-winning fast bowler's national-contract earnings — and it barely lasted a year before being broken again.