While the on-field battle begins not before March 2025, the off-field battle is taking shape after the IPL governing council announced the retention rules on Saturday (Sep 28). The IPL governing council has also now set a deadline of October 31 for the franchises to finalise the player retentions for the next three years. Franchises to retain players before October 31 After the IPL governing council announced the rules for player retentions, they are ready to go forward with the next step, which will be the IPL mega-auctions likely to take place in November. The franchises will have until entire October to decide on players they want to release for the auctions and ones they want to keep. "It is at the discretion of the IPL franchise to choose their combination for retentions and RTMs," the IPL release said. "The six retentions/RTMs can have a maximum of five capped players and a maximum of two uncapped players."  Once the retention is finalised, IPL governing council will be ready to go forward with the mega-auctions process and finalise the list of players. More than 500 and close to 600 players could be part of the mega-auctions but the final figure and names will be confirmed only when all the franchise announce their retentions. When are the mega auctions? Yet to be confirmed, the IPL mega-auctions could take place in the third or fourth week of November. As expected it will be a two-day auctions process with hundreds of players going under the hammer. Like IPL 2024 mini auctions, the mega auctions for this season is also expected to be held overseas with the United Kingdom being one of the names in the hat.