Football in India

The idea to write this post came into my mind when I was having a look at different groups of the World cup. I was really overwhelmed with a patriotic feeling and found myself wondering on the fact that, how is it possible that a country with population of over 1 Billion cannot produce 11 world class football player.

The primary reasons being:

• The first thing which struck me was the lack of infrastructure in our country. I tried to compare the number of cricket grounds to the number of football grounds present in our country and believe me the ratio was as low as it could get.
  
• Having left heartbroken from the government's side I turned towards the corporate India. I found out that the craze for football is immense in the corporate world. The Big Cats have already selected their sides and are backing them, but I was not able to find any answer as to why not even a single company is coming forward to sponsor our Indian Football team. I am not against Hockey or our Indian Hockey team but even they have got a loyal sponsor in form of Sahara, no matter how they perform.
  
• Then I turned towards the common man or the mango people or the aam aadmi of India and found that the following which cricket has in India is far more than that of football, but somehow I was not able to find good enough reasons to blame them because they buy what they see and at present the visibility of football in India is as low as it can get in a country like India.
• The improper functioning of the organization handling football in India is also a factor for such a pathetic condition of a beautiful game like football in our country. Consider the recent case of the Indian coach Bob Houghton, the organization did not had money to pay for the hike in salary requested by him.
  

But saying that Fifa will never be able to make into India and draw a significant amount of audience towards it will be totally wrong. Infact it has already started to form a grip on the Indian markets. Many Indian companies are launching their products in Fifa World cup instead of launching it long back in IPL season 3. The reason being that Fifa provides a global audience as against IPL.

Now I will be listing some of the factors which will play a significant role in laying a strong foundation for football in India. Who knows once we get a good enough fan base in our country we might be able to get a team who can qualify for the world cup.

• 20-20 cricket format has changed the preference of people to the shorter version of different games. Football is one such game which is getting an advantage due to this.
  
• Rise of sports marketing in India with the advent of large scale events like IPL. Who knows in future a major corporate house bids for the sponsorship of our football team. That day will change the way football is treated by the Indian masses.
• The Youth. Yes I am talking about you, me and the others who are in their late teens or early twenties. I have seen an immense following for football in these people. And I can bet you on this that they will act as a major driver for the upcoming of football in India. That time is not far when India will be having its own Ronney, Ronaldo and Messi.

There is hardly any reason as to why football will remain out of our focus for long. The driving factors are far more than the restraints and challenges faced by it. So lets wait and watch....

"With a little less than 36 hrs for the World cup to kick off, the excitement level in the Fifa fans is really worth seeing. I along with my team members at Brandistics will be supporting this mega event, with a wish in our hearts to see the Indian Flag flying high in the Fifa World Cup 2014."

"May the Best Team Wins" - (our apologies to all the die hard fans of different teams)

Stay tuned as Brandistics takes on the Fifa World Cup 2010...

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.