IPL: A Black Swan Event

Just a thought……Does IPL come under the umbrella of Black Swan Events? or Is it a scripted tournament, if yes than I must say it is better than even most of our Bollywood movies (to avoid any controversies I will not be talking about the latter here). Well according to me it is a Black Swan event the reason being:

IPL 1 Rajasthan Royals won the trophy. (At no point in time one could have said that they will emerge as winner)

Then in IPL 2 last year’s toppers came down and last year’s bottom two teams were put in the final.

The sudden shift of IPL from India to SA in season 2 (but everything was managed in such a way that it felt like they knew it was going to happen…U cannot make an event of such a big scale happen in about a few weeks time).

In IPL 3 when everything was going in favour of IPL, it was struck by a controversy (I think we all are well aware about it THE LALIT MODI CASE). Now the question in front of us is that, will IPL still enjoy the massive support it had managed to get in past 2 years?

And last but not the least: Will Lalit Modi regain his lost position? We here at Brandistics support Mr. Lalit Modi and hope to see him back in action. Because according to us: If IPL is ‘Manoranjan ka baap’ then Mr Modi is ‘IPL ka baap’. Well whatever the result may be we think it will again be a random one, which will come as a blow to us.

We have already seen in our previous posts that IPL stands way ahead among all the other sporting events. Now let us see how this greatness of IPL has lead to growth of various things with respect to India. They are:

Emergence of Brand India (As it is promoting itself as a game played by the Indian mass. Ad campaigns like Saare Jahan se Achcha are helping it to achieve the milestone)

Emergence of a business within cricket, thus making it a very lucrative option for Indian business houses who are ready to invest in sports.

At the game level, it has provided the young talented players of India, a stage to showcase their talent (I think this is the main reason why most of us are seeing cricket as a career).

It has promoted cricket as a commodity rather than a brand. This has brought down the emotional attachment of people with the game as a whole, but it is exploiting there emotion by targeting different states/parts of India by forming different teams representing different parts of India.

It has lead to the emergence of cricket as a competitor to football and basketball.

With this we will end this post. Stay tuned.....

3 M’s of IPL

If you want to rate a brand, you do it on the basis of the value it fetches. What do you think is the brand value of IPL.... No idea... So let me put this like this... The recent bidding values for the new teams (Pune and Kochi) touched $700 million mark, which was almost at par with the one whole Manchester Untied team. Apart from it, IPL also enjoys a TV rating which constantly extends 4. No doubt IPL has arrived, and it is posing a threat on NBA and NFL.

According to us, the main reason for the success of IPL is the 3 M’s which it follows. A detailed description about them is given below:

Match Format:

IPL offers its audience a short and enjoying 20 over format cricket popularly known as T20. This formula of Modi, of coupling cricket with drama, emotion and above all bollywood (and other celebrities) has made it more of a family affair thus taking away the TRP’s of the family Saas/Bahu serials. The fact that this format fits into the Indian style of living also helps it to gain the viewership.

Money:

The Auctioning of players, the selling of Team ownerships, selling of tickets, Sponsorships price, broadcasting rights everything involves money. And why not IPL is here to make money. This factor has also contributed in adding a huge amount of fan following to it. (I recently got a goodie bag from KKR, just because I clicked on some of their adds and answered some stupid questions... Ppl or rather sponsors are throwing out money in IPL, so someone has to be there to catch it). This act of giving gifts to the audiences is really helping it grow exponentially (and specially in a country like India where people are crazy about the gifts).

Marketing: IPL is using every kind of marketing strategy from traditional medium to latest social media tactics. You name it and they have it. So let’s try to list some of them:

(Note: we are specifically dealing with the latest marketing activities adopted by them)

The collaboration with Youtube to stream the videos

Coming out with an official ipl website

Wikipedia telling the people about IPL

 

IPL coming out with face book fan page for its viewers.


IPL YouTube Social Media Promotion Banner Ads

IPL Cricket Fan Club Website and blogs like All Padded Up

Orkut has come out with a doodle for IPL

All the above mentioned promotional schemes followed by IPL are online in nature. We covered this here so as to lay a backgound for Viral Marketing postwhich will be soon following this post. So stay tuned.

Brand Deccan Chargers - Positioning

The last time we talked about Positioning of a brand, it was for the KKR brand. It was the team that had won the wooden spoon in IPL 2009 tournament and still continues to be a big brand. But this line of thought brought us to another big brand, that of DC or Deccan Chargers who have the dubious distinction of paving the way for KKR by winning the wooden spoon in IPL 2008.

But the way they position themselves is a lot different.

They do not have a glamorous owner and they are not associated with a glamorous brand ambassador. Not surprisingly, their brand valuation has been lower than most other teams.

In the first IPL, DC were the star studded, being positioned as such, considering it made the costly purchase in Andrew Symonds and boasted of the presence of hard hitters in Gibbs, Afridi and Gilchrist apart from Symonds. In the initial years, the brand was more focussed on individual players and not the team.

Deccan Chargers' latest ads, on the other hand, be it McDowells or Idea, show it as a team of friends who play together and win together. In the parlance of brand positioning, it tells us the following three things:

• Deccan Chargers win in IPL 2009 did not do much for its individual players, but created a distinct team identity.
• There is no single player in the team that can position the team brand on its own.
• It is the only brand which has got foreign players which act as better brand ambassadors than their Indian counterparts. However, these foreign players can never carry an ad alone in the Indian waters.

We believe that Deccan Chargers have a lot of work to do with regards to their brand, and not just on the field. May be, the next time we sit down to evaluate them, they will have worked harder as a team and make a turnaround like they did from IPL 2008 to IPL 2009.

Deccan Chargers - The Brand for The Week

We started with the brand leader in IPL- Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and now we discuss the brands relatively lower in the valuation table

The Deccan Chargers (Hyderabad Team)

The DC was regarded the best team on paper after the first auctions, attracting a lot more followers with a legendary lot of international hitters - Adam Gilchrist, Shahid Afridi, Herschelle Gibbs, Andrew Symonds, and others. But, gave a lackluster performance in the first season, which failed not only the cricket strategies but also the branding strategies.

The team Deccan Chargers, in the first season was placed as a performance oriented team with the best team players that were the major brand equity of the team. A blistering hitting by these top of the league hitters was what got people excited about the brand. At the same time the owners Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd are not a well known brand by themselves.This all failed and thus called for a major marketing step up by the brand. The facts say that :-

Owners:	Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd.
Franchisee Fee:	US $107.01 mn
Sponsorships and Brand Associations	Idea,Puma,Odyssey,Kingfisher,McDowell's,Pepsi,92.7 FM
Income in Sponsorships (2008 and 2009)	Rs. 70 crore.
Income in Central Pool	Rs. 111.5 crore
Eyeball Factor	The foreign hitters - Gilly,Symonds,Gibbs,Afridi
Team Logo

Source : livemint.com

Now, in the last 2 seasons still the brand has concentrated more on performance, with no major steps in adding to their brand value. There have been no glamour, no controversies and not much of marketing tools applied by the owners - probably the team's performance spoke for it in the last season by winning the IPL and in IPL-3 they rocketed to semis with consecutive wins.So, wonder what the Deccan Chargers' vision to earn profits because its just not cricket, afterall its sports marketing and we at brandistics tell you this week ,how the Deccan Chargers have still developed as a brand.

Positioning IPL

Ok..... let me start this post with a question....What is the first thing which comes to your mind when an advertisement says: “We’re number two; we try harder”? Yes we think of only one company that is AVIS. This advertising campaign made us forget all about the number 1 company in that field that is Hertz, and all our focus shifted to Avis which positioned itself as a number 2 and promised to work harder so as to satisfy us.

Positioning has now become a process by which marketers try to create a distinct image in the minds of the prospect for its product, brand or organization. We will not be wrong if we say that Positioning is a game which companies play in the today’s me-too market place. Before the launch of IPL the only thing which would have been in the mind of Mr. Modi would have been that how to position this event in the mind of people of India.

So in 2008 Max came up with a wonderful concept in the form of an advertisement which placed IPL as “Manoranjan Ka Baap”. The idea here was to show that the IPL was better than anything and everything which was in existence at that time. It was a pure source of entertainment for the audience and had everything in it drama, action, emotion etc. All in all it was like a 3 hr blockbuster movie which could get audience bounded to their seats.
So looking at the facts mentioned above I would like to give this advertisement a mighty 8 out of 10. Because it left no stones unturned to seek the attention of the audiences and made the event a true hit.

Then in 2009 Max came up with a 60 second commercial which was a series of shots which showed different people from all over the country doing the same thing at the same time. In the first shot we saw, many people are sitting in a park, reading the newspaper and turning the pages of it at the same time. In the second shot cooks in a restaurant twirl rotis in the air at the same time. In the third shot, a class room is full of kids and all ask for permission to go to the washroom at the same time. Then we see people at Mumbai’s VT station are hailing a taxi at the same time. Then a final voice is heard which says – ‘Ek desh ek junoon, DLF IPL sirf MAX par’. This advertisement was a true classic because this created a binding between the people of India and IPL, which was being projected as an Indian entertainment event (the significance of this advertisement also increases because this was the year when the venue of IPL was shifted to SA due to security concerns, so coming up with such a concept of promoting an event as a nations event was wonderful).
I would like to give this advertisement 9 out of 10 because this was successful in holding the Indian audience’s attention even though the event was shifted to South Africa in a limited span of time. And hadn’t this commercial been successful the whole existence of IPL could have been under a major threat because of a simple fact no audience means no sponsors.

Then finally we come to this year’s IPL which is again back with an interesting commercial which says – “Saare Jahan Se Achcha Hindustan Humara” which shows captains of different teams standing in a stadium.
This ad campaign acted as a medium to get IPL back to India and position it in the mind of Indian audience as an event which is truly Indian in nature. The background music of the ad further exploited the patriotism of Indian population. So I would like to give this ad campaign a 8 out of 10 because of the wonderful concept of clubbing an ad with the nations tune of “Sare Jahan Se Achcha”.

With this we end this post of how did IPL positioned itself amongst the Indian mass. Stay tuned....

Related Rights of Broadcasters - IPL

Since the time IPL has started everyone is benefitting from it. The team franchises, team squad, team members, boards governing the event, franchise owners, broadcasters etc. This post will be more inclined towards the profits which are being made by the broadcasters and the related rights which they posses on the broadcasting of an event (which in our case is IPL). Coming as a surprise to many of us IPL became the first sporting event to be broadcasted by the popular video sharing website Youtube. As per the UK-based brand consultancy, Brand Finance Indian Premier League’s brand value is estimated to be around $4.13 billion (which comes out to be Rs. 18,000 crore) in 2010. If we rate IPL on the basis of team salaries then it takes away the second slot, next only to NBA league.

Now let us have a look at this Mecca of Marketers from the broadcaster’s point of view. The rights of the broadcaster are very important in relation to the sports program. These rights provide them with the exclusive license to broadcast the sporting event of which the rights have been assigned to them, thus making the overall offer of providing a large sum of money in advance to get the related rights of the event look attractive and lucrative.

For IPL the global broadcasting rights were given to a consortium of India’s Sony Entertainment Television network and Singapore based World Sport Group. The duration of this deal was 10 years and its cost was $1.026 billion. Later due to a dispute between the Sony/WSG and IPL the price of the deal was raised almost by two times to Rs 8,200 crore for duration of 9 years. But this was not the end of the road for Sony/WSG, they further resold their broadcasting rights to other companies thus getting in some margins for themselves. They kept broadcasting rights of India with them (because of the reason well known to all). Below is the summary of broadcasting rights around the world.

WINNING BIDDER	REGIONAL BROADCAST RIGHTS
Sony/World Sport Group	India
ONE HD	Australia
Spy Network Television	New Zealand
GEO Super	Pakistan
SportsMax	Caribbean
ITV	UK
Astro	Malaysia
PCCW	Hong Kong
Star Hub	Singapore

IPL as a tournament has been very creative in giving its broadcasting rights. In no time companies will be coming up with the new concepts of 5 minute delayed rights, 10 minute delayed rights etc. Already such an instance has happened in UK. Where ITV holds the right of broadcasting both on TV and on the internet and Youtube also is broadcastin but with a 5 minute delay.

So our recommendations to all the marketers will be that they must staytuned to this mega event of IPL as it introduces new concepts of promoting as event as a brand.

Kolkata Knight Riders - The Brand for The Week

For those who are reading Brandistics would know, that Brandistics is the first Indian blog to treat players as brands, and teams as mother brands. Indian Premier League, by that analogy, would probably then become the grandfather brand of them all.

Yes, IPL is a huge brand name today, and Ankit Chabbra has told you that it is so, because it is the 22nd most innovative company in the world today. This company gives us some awesome entertainment, some brilliant cricket, a lot of glamour, and stars that become so, almost overnight.

But if there is something that IPL gives us, apart from all of this, that makes the marketers very excited is the 8 established brands other than itself that IPL brings along. Yes, I am talking about the already established 8 teams, which would soon be joined by 2 more (Pune and Kochi) from IPL 2011.

For the sake of KISS (Keep it short and simple), Brandistics here will be taking one brand a week, and talk about it from all perspectives. Of course, if there is a lot more that we wish to discuss about that particular brand, we could extend that brand to the next week too.

So, the Brand for the Week is:

Kolkata Knight Riders

The team hasn't had the best of runs in IPL 2008 and IPL 2009, and while the performance has been better in IPL 2010, it is certainly not enough for the side to be counted as one of the favorites.

But the side definitely is a favorite among the public, which makes it a favorite for the marketers. We know IPL is a Mecca for Marketers, and KKR is one of those most desired seats.

So, this week, we would be talking about what makes KKR such a strong brand, in spite (or because of, as they case might turn out to be) of poor performances on the field.

But before we get down to any of that, let us find out a few facts about the team.

Owners:	Red Chillies Entertainment Pvt. Ltd
Franchisee Fee:	US $75.09 mn
Sponsorships and Brand Associations	Nokia, Belmonte, Star Plus, Gitanjali Jewellers, Sprite, Boomer, Reebok, Bilt, Tag Heuer, PlanetM, Next, XXX Energy Drink, Lux Hosiery
Income in Sponsorships (2008 and 2009)	Rs. 125 crore.
Income in  Central Pool	Rs. 111 crore
Eyeball Factor	Shah Rukh Khan (Co-owner of the team) Sourav Ganguly (Captain for IPL 2008 and IPL 2010)
Team Logo

Data Courtesy: Live Mint

The facts are out of the way, our opinions will now hit you. Wait for our opinions and come back for the same. Till then....

IPL: Mecca for Marketers

Mecca is the holy pilgrimage for Muslims, where once a year, the Hajj, the greater pilgrimage, takes place in Mecca and nearby sites. During the Hajj, three million people of all races worship in unison.

So, I am right in stating a cricket extravaganza, held once a year in the holy country of cricket INDIA; that engages millions of followers of their cricketing gods – a Mecca for marketers. Where else, will you find such an engaging audience and viewership to display your products.

I have been talking about IPL boosting the internet audience so a fantastic potential to get viewership on social networking sites, sports blogs and the sports websites. Next, it was the television media where the ad agencies are trying hard to gain the primetime slots on high TVR IPL matches that are beating the viewership of GEC (general entertainment channels like Star Plus , Colors etc..)

[In Television media the ad agencies usually estimate the high TVR (TV Rating) programmes and book their slots so IPL being a high rated TV show is always on their cards] .

But, how do they do that? Is something we need to learn and understand in the subsequent posts.

IPL hits the box office hard !!

Yes, this is what we have been hearing since IPL started 3 years ago.

But, on the other side of the coin actors are earning huge with appearances at IPL matches and the movie theaters earning high with match telecasts. Hence, the lone suffering parties left out are the production houses (barring Red Chillies who opted the idea to co-exist )

We need to figure this out and choose one side of the coin. First, I throw some light on the heading that IPL has actually hit hard on the box office. This holds true as in general, the success of the movies releasing on the box office determines the revenue that industry generates. With virtually no big banner movie releasing during the season, the success is far off to talk about.

This IPL season 3 the only movies released have been Well Done Abba’, ‘Hum Tum Aur Ghost’, ‘Mittal V/s Mittal’, ‘Prem Kaa Game’ and ‘My Friend Ganesha 3′,LSD, Right Yaa Wrong.

So, the main box office earnings have been by LSD (love,sex aur dokha) and atithi tum kab jaoge who have leveraged the situation

• these are low budget movies so that the investments are easily recovered with small earnings of around 6-7 crores.

• had no competitions from big banners so got their credits too, by acceptable occupancies of 20-30%.

• would have gone un-noticed amongst the biggies, if were not released during this period.
  

Even the coming month has nothing much to cheer for the movie buffs as they have to settle with small banner movies Paathshala, Phoonk-2 and Prince.

Apart from this even production houses have agreed to the fact that releasing big banners around 8th week of IPL is mere foolishness so all have pocketed their money till IPL ends.The reason have been the past 2 years which have seen real beatings on the box office.

• 2009 was a black list season for bollywood with the combined effects of the economic slowdown, elections, strike by producers and IPL.So, the industry faced a delay of around 25 films costing around 150 crores to industry.

• 2008, the first season was the one which gave them the hint to the storm that was about to hit the industry and hit it hard.

So, the market understanding says 'during IPL big budgetflicks take a side and allow for free playing grounds for low budget to compete and gather their collections and recognitions'

IPL makes it miserable for the TV industry

I would like to start my post with Lalit Modi’s statement on 24^th March 2010

“IPL will do billion dollar business this year”

And I was not shocked as this is what I have been highlighting in my previous posts; but the transition has been huge this year as compared to last year’s revenue of $450 million. So, the new ideas have been received well by the audience.

These new ideas have surely made it miserable for our very own primetime soap oper

as. This time, statistics will speak more than me.

• There has been a decline of 11 per cent in the share of general entertainment channels in the second week of the IPL telecast.So, some alarming signs for the TV industry and with around 30 days more to go for the season, the coming month is going to disturb them more.

• The opening match between Deccan Chargers and Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL3 recorded an average TVR of 7.0(C&S 4+ yrs) season, held in South Africa, the opening match recorded a TVR of 5.6 and 7.2 for both panels respectively. Though, it has not beaten the first season yet.

• The first match this season clocked 45 minutes in ad volumes, four minutes higher than that of the opening day of IPL-1 and IPL-2.

• The first 3 days of IPL3 have earned an avg. TVR of 7.0.
  

The share of Hindi movie channels has seen a rise of 42 per cent, owing to the telecast of IPL on SET Max, a movie channel.

So, basically with IPL Set Max has been topping the TVR charts; just have a look :

Click on the image to enlarge.

The major attractions this season so far have been:

• The IPL’s ‘Back in India’ ad campaign – because cricket does not excite us Indians, until there is stadium noise dubbing the TV commentary and backing it stars with roars of Sachin!!.... Sachin!! Sehwag!!.... Sehwag!!

• The hype of the Mongoose Bat, this has made the sport special. With special gears only made for IPL and you get to watch them exclusively in IPL.

• The new venues for matches (namely, Ahmedabad, Cuttuck, Nagpur, Dharamshala) that have been added, have further nationalized the game and have attracted more audience which is no more restricted to only the parent venues.

• Lastly, Sachin Tendulkar’s awesome form. Now , this is something that stops India when Sachin is on 99 and even world leaders have something to say on this:

I dont know about cricket but still I watch cricket to see sachin's play. Not because I love his play, its because to know the reason why my country"s production reduced to 50%, when he is in batting – B. H. OBAMA, President of United States of America

This is just the trailer, picture to abhi baaki hai mere dost. Next year with 2 new teams Team PUNE and Team COCHI there will be 10 teams with 34 more matches, which might be extending the suffering period to about 20 more days. So, the horrifying part for other channels awaits.

IPL boosts the Internet

You all must be ready with your 5 most common online activities and majority of you must have thought of atleast 2-3 out of the activities listed below or may agree to the list.

THE MOST COMMON 5 ACTIVITIES ON INTERNET:

1. Check E – Mail 
2. Search for Jobs 
3. Access Social Networking sites that also includes reading & writing blogs
4. Surf news sites or check sports sites for score updates 
5. Online gaming

Now, just have a look at the figure below:

Click on the image to enlarge

What I mean to say is that the internet experiences a natural increase in the number of users at the time of IPL, because of a simple reason that people are more engaged in 3 of their most common activities. This opportunity is leveraged by various websites and blogs by initiating activities based on the IPL themes. Taking each of them separately:

1. Social Networking Websites: We have already heard that Twitter is the third most popular platform for IPL discussions. So this tells that there is an increase in the

• Number of social networkers(social media traffic)
• The time spent by people on social networking sites
• Number of pages created on Facebook, number of communities created on Orkut, number of tweets re-tweets on Twitter..etc..

2. Cricket Blogs : The IPL is the favourite topic of discussions on majority of the blogs starting right from the player auctions, pre/post match analysis, team probabilities, comments on comments and controversies (How can one forget the infamous blog of KKR’s ‘FakeIplPlayer’). These blogs get a huge hype at the time of IPL and professional cricket bloggers like Brandistics' parent blog AllPaddedUp the following

• High readership
• Benefits their page ranks
• Gets them advertisements
• Provide immense pool of content to write on and for readers to enjoy.

3. Sports Websites: They get a bit overloaded during IPL with almost 2 matches a day from just 1 tournament you got to be on your toes. Live scores, live text commentary, mobile versions of live scores and the comments of cricket experts are the major services these websites bank on. These websites have got a huge traffic from:

• The corporate world that can only access these sites for live updates or are mobile most of the time.
• The travelling audience who has their GPRS enabled mobile phones to access the internet and no access to television (I am targeting very specifically).
• And the ones who access the SMS scoring services.

4. Online streaming of match videos: This one is the latest in the block and has shown a huge potential. I have lot to talk about it, so I keep it safe for my future posts.

A true innovation is the one which benefits the innovator and the environment as a whole. IPL has definitely boosted the internet industry and (If you still not buy this) the prospects are huge in the coming future. So now, are you getting a feel of why I started with IPL as the 22^nd most innovative company, globally? There is lot more left to tell you about the other verticals of entertainment viz. Television industry, Bollywood (film industry to be more precise) and the very own News industry (print + television channels). Keep reading and would love to have your comments and suggestions on my outlook.

IPL takes over the entertainment industry

My first post was just a glimpse of the things you can expect in the pipeline. To begin with I will answer the first question through this post

How has IPL taken over the entertainment industry giving a huge platform for marketing?

The entertainment industry in India is riding high on film industry, primetime television shows, and reality television shows and the news bulletins by the ever growing news channel. But when the IPL season is ‘ON’ these industries better succumb to a simple mantra:

Co-exist or die

We’ll look at the statistics that made me say this for IPL by discussing its impact on the Indian masses through various media ; be it television, newspapers, movie theatres and the latest one that has come up in the list (specially after the Google – IPL tieup, the first initiative ever to livesteam 60 matches in 43 days) is the internet.

We see everyone coordinating with IPL so far like movie theatres (that bore huge losses during first season) buying screening rights to telecast the matches, newspapers and news sites with special IPL pages, internet flooded with blogs, social network discussions and television channels starting up IPL shows for example, the IPL tie up with TV channel Colors worth Rs. 30 crores.

It would be an exciting discussion and to start with I take the last one – internet, that has brought about an exponential yoy growth in the viewership of the game this year.

Well, there were hits by the viewers on sports sites like ESPN’s Cricinfo, Yahoo! Cricket , Rediff Sports ,even our own sport blogs and social networking sites in the last 2 seasons. But with the advent of Google into the picture in the third season its true to say that there is something in the direction, the leader points towards. So, a huge potential for these live scoring sites, social networking sites, ticketing and gaming sites has been revealed. To throw some light on this potential, the statistics of online media recorded say:

• The number of internet users on major sports sites has doubled after the player’s auctions starting from January 2010 as compared to those in January 2009.
• IPL channel on Youtube is the #1 viewed channel in India.The channel views of IPL on Youtube have reached 80,00,000 in the first 5 days with 38 days more to go you can expect a lot.
• On the first day of IPL-3 in terms of channel views IPL saw the number going up 84 per cent to 880,615 by the second half of the day from 478,057 in the first half. By Sunday, it had crossed 3.1 millions.
• Twitter has been stated as the third most popular platform for IPL discussions with KKR [Kolkata Knight Riders] as the most discussed team and Ricky Ponting most discussed player.

There are lot more statistics but let’s digest them slowly. So it is assured that there is some impact created on the online audience. But let me bring you a bigger picture. Just think of five most common things you do when you go online and make a list in your mind whereas I catch you up in the next post.

Or let us make this more interesting, put those 5 things in the comment section of this post!

IPL - 22nd Most Innovative. Globally.

Wonder why IPL has made its way into the list of most innovative companies at the 22nd Position? Well, if you haven't then you should have. After all, it started only in 2008, and it is already on a prestigious list.

Now, that you have wondered, or rather, now that we have forced you to wonder, here are some answers.

IPL defined a new economy of cricket through the success of its first season in 2008.The idea was to target the primetime audience who were now bored of the monotonous saas–bahu soaps and present them a shorter form of entertaining cricket buttered with glam from bollywood.

The innovation did not stop here; there is more to it – the business side of the game. IPL is a revolution in sports marketing, starting with the high bids on players, to huge sponsorships, broadcasting rights, ground tickets and most importantly a theme for marketers to promote their brands through co – branding strategies, all of it generates huge revenue.

If we are talking revenue, let us give you some figures!

IPL is expected to generate revenue of over Rs. 10,000 Crores ($2 billion) in its first decade. I said ‘over’ as the world’s richest cricketing body BCCI [Board of Cricket Control in India] is going to be richer by Rs. 750 Crores ($150 million) in IPL3, up 25% from the last season. So, with such a season on season (sos) growth in revenue it might reach the target well before expectations.

With so much money being fished out by the leading global marketers in this sport, there must be a lot to talk on this subject which is what the upcoming posts will describe you:

• How has IPL taken over the entertainment industry giving a huge platform for marketing?
• How do the business minds investing in the teams find it a valuable proposition?
• How are the various big brands co–branding with IPL?

You want to know the answers, don't you?!