IPL & Brands go hand in hand!

In the shift from test matches to one-day and then to Twenty-20 formats comprising of Indian Premier League, there has been a profound reworking of the internal biology of cricket. From being a sport to be played in a time of leisure, cricket has transformed in not just a profession and an industry, but also as an enterprise that acts as a platform for advertisers, celebrities, businesses, and even consumers. With cricket’s transformation into the politics of velocity, the game now races beyond the boundaries of sport and becomes integral to the shaping of “brand India”.

Vaishali Sharma, VP-Marketing, Sony MAX, in an interview recently said,“IPL draws people across age groups, gender and language. This year’s campaign 'Come On, Bulaava Aaya Hai’ stems from the insight of how the passion for IPL overtakes every aspect of people’s lives.” To attract new viewers to the T-20 leagues, the broadcaster is rolling out the campaign on TV, print, radio, digital, outdoor and on-ground activities with emphasis on smaller towns and cities. The advertising and marketing managers plan creative methods so as to attract maximum viewers towards their brand and products. V Shyamal Kumar, Manager at Videocon D2H (which is a sponsor of IPL tournament) says, “The increased viewership of the tournament every year shows that we made the right choice by investing in IPL.”

 Indian Premier League has set new dimensions when it comes to the commercialization of the sport. It isn't surprising to see that IPL is seen as a boon for the advertising and marketing industry. Adv

ertisement rates for a 10-second spot on the channels are being sold for Rs.4.5-4.75 lakh this year. One can see a player walking on the field who appears more like a walking billboard instead of a cricketer. With around six sponsor logos on an average on the jerseys of the players like that of Aircel, Videocon D2H, Orbit, Usha, Quickr, etc. it would not be incorrect to compare the players with walking billboards. The game acts as a link between the player’s talent and a brand’s image. Even the established brands are using this platform for increasing their market share. The brand becomes a part of “the action” and imbibes the characteristics of the team. A hard-core sports fan is like a religious fanatic. Most brands hope that some of these fanatics cross over and move from supporting just the team to supporting its team of sponsors.

Even the commentary in the sport, the main aim of which is to inform the viewers about the minute-to-minute update of the match, sounds like advertising. For example, each six a ‘DLF maximum’, ‘Karbonn Kamaal Catches’, each critical point in the game a ‘Citi moment of success’ focusing different brands and companies. It becomes a matter of humor for the core fans of the sport who now hear commentators announcing bathroom fittings brand names in case they are taking a restroom break.The misery of the people watching matches on the television sets is heightened when the screen suddenly splits into two; sometimes loses a horizontal quarter to ads, sometimes a vertical, sometimes both along. 

 The glitzy and glamorous IPL-Indian Premier League importing the idea of privately owned franchises from a combination of soccer’s EPL (English Premier League) and the American NFL (National Football League) became a super hit when launched in the year 2008. The first season got the highest TRP ever for any cricketing event in India. Media buying agencies pronounced IPL as the biggest advertising revenue spinner for every year. It created a television-centric, cash-rich, celebrity-driven, non-national, cricket-based product that was intended to sell to the world. The trend of successful IPL seasons is continuing this year too and it is visible that social media has also jumped into the business. Not just that, a clutch of e-commerce companies such as Flipkart, Amazon and Go daddy, etc. are also seen investing heavily in the current edition of the Indian Premier League for buying on air advertising space. Media planners believe that either good or bad, there is no other property on television which can give the kind of mileage that the IPL delivers. The tournament has built so many brands over the last six years, especially mobile handset brands like Micromax and Karbonn that IPL can be considered as a free hit to advertisers.

The idea of an association between personalities from entertainment industry and business leaders taken from the football league worked wonders and helped in enhancing the brand image of IPL. It is neither just cricket nor its just entertainment, it nowadays is Cricketainment. When Bollywood and cricket met, the result was beneficial for all. The addition of entertainment-inspired glamour extended to creating theatre and spectacle at matches. Undoubtedly, it is very entertaining to see one’s favorite cricketer as well the Bollywood stars on the same platform. Superstars like Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Shilpa Shetty, Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone were seen endorsing and promoting various players and teams, which provided a lot of glamour and added value to IPL. Even the celebrities and businessmen are an important factor in the entire process of image building of the team as well as the brand. In Season 1, the total number of brands advertising in IPL was 40. In Season 2, it grew to 69 and this time it has already crossed a total of about 90!

IPL is definitely not a purely cricket oriented concept rather it can be seen as a coming together of varied professions; a package that includes the traditional building blocks of players looking for quick money, administrators, specialized coaches, along with politicians, businessmen, nutritionists, statisticians, videographers, public relations managers, film stars, physiotherapists, engineers who design analytic software, film stars who seek publicity, businesses looking for a better advertising platform, and television channels trying to improve their ratings. It is the stitching together of the best practices in the world for combining sports with entertainment.

This form of cricket, the IPL, has brought more razzmatazz and speed to the sport than had ever hitherto been imagined. But, at the same time all these advertising and marketing efforts raise the need to strike the right balance between entertainment and sport, and between drawing in crowds and maintaining the credibility and quality of the sport on offer. It’s a well known fact that the Indians’ love for cricket is inevitable. The sport is considered no less than a religion in India and despite of the innumerable controversies that grow year after year, nothing has deterred the brands from putting their money in IPL. And it’s visible that IPL and brands go hand in hand!