IPL – The Indian premier league has taken the cricketing world by storm. It has also got its marketing mix spot on.
TV, Internet, Newspapers… Every medium is flooding with DLF IPL, a private event; that above all, explains the success of Indian Premier League. For a private event, entire media is fighting to give free of cost coverage! Strange, but Interesting! So what marketing and branding strategy has worked in favour of IPL?
One, “Packaging of the Event” from day 1 as entertainment is the biggest strategic hit. It structured teams around states thereby ensuring team and brand loyalties and assured eyeballs when it comes to media.
The first season of the Indian Premier League commenced on 18 April 2008 in India, and ended on 1 June 2008 with the victory of the Rajasthan Royals against Chennai Super Kings in the final at the DY Patil Stadium, Navi Mumbai.
As the second season of the IPL coincided with multi-phase 2009 Indian general elections, the Indian Central Government refused to provide the Indian paramilitary forces to provide security, saying the forces would be stretched too thinly if they were to safeguard both the IPL and the elections. As a result, the BCCI decided to host the second season of the league outside India. All 59 matches of the second season, abbreviated as IPL 2, took place in South Africa. Ironically, South Africa were also scheduled to have elections doing the IPL, however, the South African government provided adequate security for both the South African General Elections and the IPL.
When Bollywood and cricket met, the result was IPL and it was truly entertaining to see one’s favorite cricketer as well the Bollywood star on the same platform. IPL was no doubt an entertaining one. Super stars like Shah Rukh, Preity, Akshay, Katrina, Hrithik had been a source which provided a lot of glam to IPL promotion.
To attract the cricket fans, even team-owners have started selling tickets personally. Preity Zinta, the co-owner of Kings XI Punjab and Australian pace man Brett Lee sold the tickets along with their autographs.
The IPL is predicted to bring the BCCI income of approximately US$ 1.6 billion, over a period of five to ten years. All of these revenues are directed to a central pool, 40% of which will go to IPL itself, 54% to franchisees and 6% as prize money. The money will be distributed in these proportions until 2017, after which the share of IPL will be 50%, franchisees 45% and prize money 5%. The IPL signed up Kingfisher Airlines as the official umpire partner for the series in an Rs.106 Crore’s (1.06 billion) deal. This deal sees the Kingfisher Airlines brand on all umpires’ uniforms & also on the giant screens during third umpire decisions. Sony Entertainment Television signed a new contract with BCCI with Sony Entertainment Television paying a staggering Rs.8700 Crore’s (87 billion) for 10 years.
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