The tenth season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), which will kick off on April 5, is expected to be a sporting extravaganza for cricket aficionados. Just like previous seasons, this year, sensing an opportunity to the grab attention of IPL viewership, startups are in the list of the 14 major sponsors. E-commerce giant Amazon and mobile handset maker Vivo are the presenting sponsors, while Makemytrip has been retained as one of the associate sponsors.
As the most popular sporting event in the country, IPL has been the biggest platform for several brands in India. For instance after signing a two year IPL title sponsorship deal with BCCI in 2015 and riding on IPL’s popularity with a more than $12 million (Rs 80 crore) marketing blitz during IPL last year, this cricket tournament has played a pivotal role in Chinese mobile manufacturer VIVO’s efforts to become the second biggest phone brand in India.
Over the years, IPL has seen massive jump in its viewership reach. Last year with a cumulative reach of 361.2 million viewers, season nine of IPL witnessed a 254% increase since its inaugural season in 2008 and an 88% increase over the previous season. According to mediatech startup Zapr, Amazon topped the charts with 352 ad spots and an impressive 268 million viewership reach in the first week of IPL 2016. As a result of these impressive viewership statistics in season nine, the number of sponsors in 2017 has increased to more than last year’s tally of 12.
To cater to these increased number of sponsors in season 10 a typical IPL match will see an ad-inventory of 2,300 seconds, out of which Vivo, which replaced Oppo as the presenting sponsor this year, has committed 300 seconds of airtime per match. Other presenting sponsors have committed over 210 seconds each, while all associate sponsors have been given 120 seconds. This year while presenting sponsors have to shell out a price of more than $7000 (Rs 5.20 lakh) per 10-second spot, associate sponsors will be paying more than $7500 (Rs 5.75 lakh) per spot.
Other than the firms investing to become associate and presenting sponsors for on-air advertising during IPL, there are startups that have formed partnerships directly with IPL teams or transferred their ownership rights to others. Snapdeal owned digital payments platform FreeCharge has handed over its two year on ground sponsorship rights of the IPL to the Kishore Biyani led Future Group. Earlier in November 2015, Freecharge had signed a two-year deal with the Board Of Control For Cricket In India (BCCI) to take on the rights as a ground sponsor for the IPL. This acquisition of sponsorship rights was seen as a move to counter bigger rival Paytm’s more than $30 million (Rs 203 crore) coup in bagging the title sponsorship rights in July 2015 for all cricket matches, domestic and international, played in the country.
Due to its success in retaining a loyal fan base, IPL has emerged as the preferred vehicle for companies across industries to reach out to consumers. Brands such as Oppo, Vivo, Lava, Micromax and LYF, have become sponsors for six out of the eight teams participating in this league. Karbonn Mobiles is the principal partner of the Delhi Daredevils team, and Gionee is on the jersey of Kolkata Knight Riders. Moving beyond sponsorship, homegrown mobile manufacturer Intex Technologies has bought ownership of the Gujarat Lions, an IPL team. In 2017 coinciding with launch of IPL season, it has made an investment from the corpus of more than $25-30 million (Rs 150-200 crore) fund into Rooter, a mobile app development startup that aims to enable sports fans to interact live with each other during a match.
The eighth season of the IPL (in 2015) saw e-commerce majors reign supreme with brands such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, CarDekho, Car-Trade, Paytm, Shopclues and Myntra bringing around 23% of the total ad revenues for the broadcaster. However, last year the handset manufacturers contributed around 20% of advertising revenues for Sony Pictures Networks. This year as cricket loving fans get ready to watch their favorite franchisee team win T-20 cricket’s most coveted trophy, an announcement by the official broadcast partner, Sony Pictures Networks (SPN), three days before the launch shows the popularity of the event. It has managed to achieve what Fox Network did a week ahead of the Super Bowl: Sell all advertising spots prior to the kick-off of the year’s biggest TV event. In doing so SPN has crossed its target of more than $200 million (Rs 1,300 crore) in advertising revenue from the city-specific tournament, even before a ball is bowled.
Source: forbes
