31 May,2009 06:36 AM IST | | Ajay S Shankar and Judhajit Basu
Post IPL, player managers, franchise officials and investors admit that they are coming to terms with new trends and potential conflicts that are beginning to redefine their bottomlines
BEHIND the screaming fans, the strategy breaks and the DLF maximums, the IPL also appears to have triggered a significant churning off the field, in the bustling market of cricket. The hugely successful Twenty20 league has just wrapped up its second season, and player managers, franchise officials and investors admit that they are coming to terms with new trends and potential conflicts that are beginning to redefine their bottomlines.
Team endorsements preferred
"There is nothing unusual about these contracts," says a senior franchise official. "The IPL contracts do not give franchises anything that is not standard throughout team sports worldwide."
Yet some key concerns persist within the industry, the first of which is the fear that a player endorsing a brand for his IPL team will be shunned by rival brands within the same product category after the tournament. "We are not directly involved with the event, but if you ask me whether it makes brand sense for us to get a player on board before or after the IPL, after him being associated with a rival company during the course of the tournament, I would say not," says V Ramachandran, director, marketing and sales, LG, a leading multinational brand.
A case in point is the reported US$ 2-3m deal between Mumbai Indians and Idea, a leading Indian mobile service provider. Through this IPL, Idea has been using Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan together and individually in a TV campaign. Tendulkar, who is one of Indian cricket's leading endorsement faces, is paid around US$ 1.02 million per season by Mumbai Indians, but according to market analysts, he would easily have got US$ 1 million if the Idea endorsement was an individual endorsement outside the league.
"But now, Idea gets Tendulkar, Harbhajan and Zaheer in a package deal that they can utilise through the year," says a player agent. "Obviously, the players don't get a single rupee out of this, and also end up losing out on personal endorsements from other mobile service providers."
Safeguards in player contracts
Franchise officials point out that there are clear safeguards in the IPL's player contracts specifying that brands associated with teams cannot imply that the cricketers are associated with them individually in any manner. "Most of the contracts specify that the players can be used for product endorsement and activation only during the IPL," says a franchise official. "Besides, a team sponsor has to feature at least three players in any advertisements. There are enough and clear safeguards to protect the players."
But behind the fine print, says a player agent, is the fear that some sponsors may tend to project a particular player more in these advertisements. "Besides, it's all about perception," he says. "Once you see Sourav Ganguly or Ishant Sharma endorse a particular product for Kolkata Knight Riders, even if it is with other players, it gets embedded in the public mindspace. You can't then go to individual households and tell them, 'Look, this is a team endorsement and not a personal endorsement."
The other area of concern is that some leading players have been forced to endorse certain brands for their franchises in categories they have steadfastly refused to promote in an individual capacity. For instance, Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, widely considered role models in Indian cricket, have always refused to endorse liquor brands until the IPL. Tendulkar now has the Royal Stag logo on his team jersey and Dravid promotes Royal Challenge.
Courtesy: Cricinfo
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This is an abridged version of an article published on Cricinfou00a0 website. For the full piece, log on to www.cricinfo.com