The IPL was Well-Marketted

By Ananya Das College: Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai University: e-mail: nnya07@gmail.com Abstract: In 2008 the Board of Control for Cricket India, initiated the Indian Premier League (IPL) -a professional league for Twenty20 cricket format competition. But even before its start the IPL was in the news for its altercation between the Indian Cricket League (ICL) started by Subhash Chandra of Zee Telefilms Ltd. The BCCI used many tactics (including threatening players who joined ICL that they would not be picked up for national team, raising prize money, inviting celebrities...) to eventually crush the ICL format that had started almost a year before. The constant confrontations between ICL and IPL were perennially in the top news in all the news channels. This along with the fact that it was cricket made sure that the Indian viewer was hooked. The IPL is currently contested by 10 teams consisting of players from around the world. Introduction

The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a professional league for Twenty20 cricket championship in India. It was initiated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra and is supervised by BCCI. Admits all the controversies & scandals, IPL stands as the most glamorous and the most well-known cricket league in the world. The success of such leagues in the game of football was a well-known fact, and there was a need for a similar platform to be introduced in cricket. This need was accompanied by the fact such as BCCI being the worlds richest cricket board, Indias fanaticism for the game of cricket, the Indian big shot businessmen who had never invested in sports before, and the Bollywood.

Need for Brand The concept of 20-20 cricket was laid down to make the game of cricket more entertaining. But the fact that cricket earlier played in one day and 5 days format couldnt have been played as a league helped the 20-20 cricket bloom as a league. This was very similar for shorter games like football played for 90 minutes, 90 minutes of adrenaline. The failure of ICL, which was launched a year before the IPL was marked by the following facts: 1. Lack of good players who can create brands.

2. Lack of advertising glamour. 3. The rules & regulations imposed by the BCCI In all we can say that the ICL couldnt establish itself as a brand, for various reasons.

How do Sports Events create Brand? If is often said that the A Product lies on shelves of stores whereas Brands are created in the minds of the customers. Sports Marketing is no different, its success lies with its viewers turning into fans and then into addicts. So the question is what drives people towards viewing sports? Below are few facts that help in selling sports: 1. Adrenaline 2. Entertainment 3. Favorite Players 4. Belongingness towards a...

IPL as a brand IPL was thoughtfully targeted at the rich businessmen and celebrities who were likely to make huge investments. IPL appealed to the local as well as the global audience, added glamour and ensured revenue generation to the BCCI. Its value proposition is unique and as a brand, IPL is growing stronger every year. IPL offers differentiation; the matches are compact and are played for 3 hours when compared with normal ODI and test matches. The content is primarily cricket which is showcased in a format similar to that of a football match or a movie, gripping the audience for long enough to engage them, at the same time ensuring that they do not get bored. According to a report from the brand valuation consultancy Brand Finance, IPL brand in 2010 was valued at $4.13billion when compared with international leagues such as EPL, which is valued at more than $12 billion. This highlights the potential as well as the success generated by the IPL in a short span of 5 years. IPL is sponsored by popular brands like DLF, Coca Cola, Samsung, Maruti, TVS, Parle etc and it is predicted that brand IPL will bring over $1.6nbn to BCCI in 5-10 years through sponsorships and TV Rights. Team portfolio:

IPL marketing can be a lesson that no publicity is bad publicity. It was Integrated Marketing communication at its best, no channel no mode of communication was left: TV, newspaper, internet, mobiles, every communication was uniform in promoting IPL during its launch and its subsequent seasons. IPL, a phenomenon in Indian Cricket: The success of IPL is unprecedented in the annals of Indian cricket and it gave jitters to organizations known for their marketing skills and euphoria that they create around their products. IPL has taken the amalgamation of cricket and entertainment to the new heights altogether. It brought together all possible aspects of entertainment on one common platform and turned cricket into a four hours of adrenal rush and melodrama.

What IPL did was unimaginable. It bring to the life the dream of strange combinations like Dhoni pitted against Gautam Gambhir or The Prince of Kolkata striving hard to bring Pune to victory by trouncing his home city Kolkata. It adds to the pleasure seeing King Khan, Pretty lady Preeti Jinta giving flying kisses to cheer up. In the first week of the tournament, including the opening ceremony, the IPL has already recorded 13.7 million views, as against 8.8 million views last year. This represents a 56 per cent growth over last year As per Google India head of media sales Praveen Sharma Were really excited to see the continuous growth in viewership of IPL. This is the third year of our association with live streaming of IPL and the viewership numbers clearly indicate the distributed media consumption pattern of the Indian consumers. There have been new mechanisms introduced like Strategic Time out of 7 and a half minute. This feature has provided enough scope and made the IPL more attractive for Broadcasters. As per (blog, 2012)

from the business point of view of IPL organizers, the strategic time out provides the much needed boost for ad revenue in the television sets and screen boards. In fact the high rate BCCI

charges for the IPL broadcast is primarily due to the strategic time out feature which is attractive to almost all the broadcasters.

There have been concern amongst the audience regarding IPL being just too much westernized and look and feel of Cricket A Gentlemans Game is depleting. As per the petition of advocate K Jebakumar (Bureau P. , 2012) Surrounding Controversies:

semi-nude dancers denigrated men and women and appealed to the prurient interest of public and therefore the celebrities were liable to be booked under Sections 292 (sale of obscene books), 293 (sale of obscene objects to young persons) and 294 (obscene acts and songs) of IPC. The celebrities have violated the provisions of Indecent Representation of Women (prohibition) Act-1986, Children and Young Persons (harmful publication) Act and Foreigners Act -1946, as well as violated the visa conditions and passport act Cashing on IPL mania: IPL has been a god send opportunity for many products for launching their new products, Showcasing their line of products and garnering the maximum value out of their celebrity endorsement. For instance (country, 2012) IPL team Mumbai Indians and Disney Consumer Products today launched Mickey Cricket special collection, a limited edition merchandise range for the kids. Though there have been a concern about fatigue due to excessive amount of cricket being played and hence loss of TV viewership and injuries to the players and hence their availability in international games. As per (Engineer, 2012) According to Indiantelevision.com, the opening game of the IPL between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings drew a rating of 6.13, the highest of the season so far but well below the 7.77 rating for the opening game last year and 6.95 the year before. The IPL did give Set Max four of the top five rated shows between April 4 and April 10, but while the Delhi Daredevils game against Kolkata Knight Riders posted a 5.56 rating, the other two games had ratings under 4.00. The lowest rated game from the first week was between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Daredevils, which drew a TVR of just 2.68. Tariq Engineer further notes down Perhaps more worrying for the IPL is that it posted its first ever decline in the total number of people who have watched the show to this point, while advertisers have also adopted more of a

wait-and-watch approach. Three major brands Parle, LG Electronics and Godrej chose not to continue their association with the league this season. Alok Bharadwaj, senior vice-president of Canon India, told the Times of India earlier this month that advertisers are starting to consider other options as their returns from the IPL are not proportional to the increasing costs. Canon has reportedly cut down its spending on the league by 80%. What was hit and Misses from marketing point of view: Though IPL in all its 5 avatars has been a marketing success, but declining popularity of T 20, which is evidently reflected in decreasing TV viewership and hence the TRP. Even the number of people going to stadium has also been falling year after year. So, probably there is needed to relook into the marketing effort of IPLs. Even in the earlier avatars of IPLs, there have been attempts to present IPL more as an experience rather than just a sport. It had been made a confluence of Hollywood, Bollywood, Dance, Drama, flesh and obviously cricket too. The huge spending by broadcasters to make IPL a success has been consistent year on year. The effort made to convert IPL an Indian version of European league has been a success to some extent. It contains all the element of entertainment that an audience can ask for. Now recently the stage performances by various artists have also started catering to this kind of need of entertainment. Though I believe, catering to the need of particular segment many a times, the marketing efforts have been gone to too much length than actually needed. As have been observed, skimpily dressed cheerleader and their dances are not much welcome to traditional society like India, where entire family watches TV together and still such a show of exuberance combined with excessive show of flesh is generally a taboo. IPL has successfully poached into viewership of TV soaps, as it was a welcome change and affect created was of mirth and merry and welcome break from Saas-Bahus painful saga. IPL has been successful in bringing the entire family together as it has something for everyone. But it will be a challenge for IPL to retain the viewerships year after year which have been decreasing on the successive avatars. IPL has lost in retaining few aspects of cricket the sport. Though it has been a huge success and has attracted crowd from various walk of life, but there has been a loyal segment of following of cricket- people, who understand finesses of cricket, who know the difference between Mid-on and mid off. These classes of people, who want to see cricket along with entertainment rather the other way around, have been dithering away from this new genre of cricket. IPL has also failed in targeting the wide spread rural population, which forms the major chunk of audience for International cricket team. In this divide of team and hence the loyalty has left a huge mass of rural people from semi-urban and rural places looking for belongingness. For ex, a person from Patna, Bihar may wonder whether he should support Kolkata, being the neighboring city or Delhi as the representative of all the northern states like Delhi, UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. How to resolve this?

IPL can introduce the idea of wild card entry for team of smaller cities. It can use its deep pocket to sponsor this kind of team and supporter base. In India, whose other name can be a nation of diversity need developing these small city team, based on density of cricket lover and existing spread of teams. For example BCCI can target cities like Patna, Indore and Bhubaneswar for developing its consumer base, which will also help country develop a deeper cricket culture. Lately there has been effort to make cheerleader look more traditional and representative of the teams rather than making it a vulgar show. That is a welcome change and must be applauded. To allay the fear of consumers i.e. the cricket lover that IPL and other numerous T-20 format is making the schedule very tedious and leaving senior player no room to rest and putting them on injury. BCCI can mull over the option of making separate squad of T-20 and 50-50 and test format. India with a one billion plus population should be able to cater this demand of professional cricketer. In case, BCCI is not able to do this, it will reflect poorly on its management of nation full of cricket enthusiast and mismanagement of deep pocket owing to the huge popularity of cricket.

The IPL tried to penetrate the mind of the consumer using continuous bombardment of its marketing messages rather than subtly trying to get the message through. As a result, the IPL is everywhere.On the hoarding outside your office window, on your Android device as an app, on the public transport vehicle which you use to commute and even on your computers through YouTube and other portals. If we were to form a marketing matrix for consumer reactions to cricket in general, we would find that most of the consumers would be true fans. The IPL marketing matrix can be divided into the following subgroups a) Cricket lovers who watch any and every form of cricket b) Cricket lovers who watch the IPL because of the lack of other alternatives c) Non cricket lovers who watch the IPL because of its EQ (entertainment quotient) A small survey would tell us that the majority of the consumers of the IPL brand would be youngsters (both male and female) followed by middle-aged men and women and the rest would be switchers who are indifferent towards the IPL. Furthermore the majority would be middle aged men followed by young boys. Thus we can clearly see that the IPL consists of mostly spurious followers who would switch given a better option and, in effect, actually leads to the loss of a certain section of puritan true fans of cricket because of its overkill. The question then arises is: Is the IPL marketed well enough as a promoter of cricket?

The marketing strategy of the IPL is to subconsciously get the consumer to market the event through word-of-mouth strategies because in a culture like India, this form of communication works better than any other. Thus the IPL advertisements on national television were vocal in promoting the IPL as a festival of sorts using a sofa and a television to showcase it as a family event at times while focusing on large crowds at other times to market it as an event of mass appeal. The expectation was to strike a chord in the mind and heart of the consumer that everyone is watching the IPL and, more importantly, everyone should watch the IPL. The IPL had something to offer for everyone. T20 had exploited the popularity of a fast, compact game previous associated with soccer and American football. The IPL explored the possibilities of the dalliance of T20 with the world of entertainment thus bringing a closure to the needs of the consumers who were bored with drawn or washed out Test matches or soggy soap operas. The result was a heady marketing cocktail to quote Business Standard. The IPL stimulated consumers across the spectrum on the parameters of innovation, excitement, action and entertainment and literally forced them into buying into its equity. It sold nationalism and other secondary alliances at premium prices on a golden platter and the sensitized audiences were quick to lap it up. Lastly, unlike other sporting events which often follow muted marketing strategies to ensure that the sensibilities of sport lovers are not hurt, the IPL unabashedly marketed itself as an umbrella brand for its sponsors. So when a batsman succumbed to a Karbonn Kamal catch while trying to go for a DLF Maximum, it was considered to be a Citi moment of success. Probably for the first time in the history of the game advertising had crossed the hallowed altars of the commentary box. The IPL was a corporate event with the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies serving as the pitch and the glitterati and the paparazzi as the spectators. Yes, the IPL was extremely well marketed but not as a cricketing event. Thus, without a core competency, it might struggle to find its footing in the long run. Secondly, the aggressive marketing strategies of the IPL raise a very pertinent question. Can we term it as a best marketing practice when a popular brand expend large amounts of resources in the pursuit of larger gains and, knowingly or unknowingly, take the game beyond its right direction?