CRICKETING aficionados had expected a record-shattering deal, and they were right. On September 4th the Indian Premier League (IPL), a domestic tournament which uses the abridged Twenty20 (T20) format, announced that it had signed a five-year contract worth $2.55bn for its worldwide broadcasting and digital rights. The $510m yearly fee stumped up by Star India, a television network owned by 21st Century Fox, is 158% greater than that of the previous deal, in which Sony had controlled all of the media rights. Star beat 23 other bidders that had competed for various parts of the new package, including Facebook. The IPL’s annual cricketing circus is a brief one, lasting just 60 matches across six weeks in April and May, which means that its $8.5m cost per game will be four times that of the National Basketball Association and two-thirds that of the English Premier League.

The deal also dwarfs those which have been negotiated by national sides. On an annual basis, it is as valuable as those of the “big three”—England, Australia and India—combined. The International Cricket Council (ICC), the sport’s governing body, has never officially disclosed the television fees for its international tournaments, but those rights are believed to be worth $1.9bn over the eight-year cycle from 2015, including four World Cups across two formats. National teams can only look enviously at the IPL’s bumper cheque, which marks two long-awaited milestones. First, that brash young T20 cricket has outgrown its stately forefathers, the one-day international (ODI) and five-day Test match. And second, that clubs, rather than countries, have become cricket’s most lucrative attraction.

The vulnerability of longer formats and potential of T20 have been obvious since its inception. In 2003, English county sides devised a version of the game that could be played in a single evening, on the basis of market research suggesting that dwindling crowds were still keen to watch cricket, but not for entire days. These short matches were thrilling, with the wickets, big hits and drama of a week crammed into three hours. They were enormously popular, too. Workers streamed from their offices on late July afternoons, with pints of beer and sunglasses in hand. Other cricketing nations swiftly developed similar leagues, and international matches soon followed: for women in 2004, and for men a year after. By 2007 the ICC had organised a T20 world championship, with India triumphing against fierce rivals Pakistan in a nail-biting final. Five further tournaments have been held in the decade since. The most recent, in 2016, had a $10m pot of prize money—as large as the one for the 2015 edition of the ODI World Cup, the sport’s most venerated knockout competition, which has been running for four decades.

Yet it is in the domestic sphere that T20 has really thrived. Outside of the biannual tournaments, international games have remained something of an exhibition, tacked onto the end of long Test-match and ODI tours. In such a system, the world’s biggest hitters and most miserly bowlers might only face each other in short-form contests a handful of times a decade. All-star club matches, played every night of the week, have filled that void. India was initially reluctant to organise them. “India will never play T20… T20? Why not ten-ten or five-five or one-one?” harrumphed a representative of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) at an ICC meeting in 2006. Becoming world champions in 2007 must have changed some influential minds. In early 2008 the BBCI launched the IPL, which combined the razzmatazz of cheerleaders and the glamour of Bollywood owners with an auction of the world’s best players. In Shane Warne, Sachin Tendulkar, Jacques Kallis and Adam Gilchrist, it boasted arguably the greatest bowler, batsman, all-rounder and wicketkeeper of the modern era. (Most of the other contenders for those titles also appeared.)

Though a latecomer to the scene, the IPL was by far the most opulent of the many domestic competitions that sprung up around the globe, and continued to attract the best players. It has combined the strongest elements of the other leagues: a team for each major city (rather than regional sides, which inspired less loyalty), an auction and flashy branding. The rest of the Test-playing world, meanwhile, has continued to develop its range of tournaments. A T20 player can find work in Australia’s Big Bash League, New Zealand’s Super Smash, England’s T20 Blast, South Africa’s Ram Slam, or similar leagues in the Caribbean, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Organisers have staggered the events carefully to minimise overlaps and wrangling for players, which has resulted in a never-ending worldwide circus. June is the only month in 2017 thus far in which no Test-match nation has hosted a T20 league.

Instead, the contractual tussles have mostly been between clubs and countries. The most expensive signings in the IPL can earn $2m for six weeks of work, with six-figure contracts available in other T20 leagues. The big-three national sides have hung onto their stars thus far, since they give them contracts worth worth $900,000 a year; the players are allowed to moonlight in India for the IPL, but generally prefer to don their country’s garb for the rest of the season. Not so for the likes of New Zealand, Sri Lanka or the West Indies, who can only offer total salaries of around $230,000. This has created a troupe of globe-trotting mercenaries, hopping from auction to auction and ignoring the pleas of national selectors. Of the West Indian XI that won last year’s T20 world championship, just two have subsequently played a Test match, and none has this year. Chris Gayle, a 37-year-old Jamaican who is the most destructive batsman in the game, has turned out for 20 different T20 franchises, but last played a five-day fixture in 2014.

It is still possible to excel in different formats: 19 of the IPL’s 50 most valuable players last year had amassed at least 30 Test caps. But as short-form domestic competitions become more lucrative, there will be little incentive for younger cricketers to bother developing the skills needed to endure the best part of a week. They will grow up with dreams of hammering sixes under lights in Mumbai, rather than grinding out an innings on the prestigious turf of Lord’s in London. The sporadic nature of international tours, without any overarching contest to bind them together, and the weakening of smaller nations will only accelerate this process. There are no signs that T20’s growth might be slowing. Indeed, the IPL is likely to gain two teams and expand its 60-game schedule to 76. Domestic cricket, forever a sideshow, is now the headline act. The question is not whether its audience will continue to swell, but how big a stage will be left for the international game.