IPL 5 - Whatta Business Strategy (Just My View)

Indian Premier League, very well known to the world as IPL - Looks like an amalgamation of foreign players with Indian Cricket Team and Local players to provide the audience, a good cricket. But it is not only a mix of players across the globe but it has a mix of proper business strategy to it.

IPL has been started and executed in India successfully since 2008. But this season (IPL5) has some interesting facts. E.g. the ticket prices are higher than before still the stadiums are using their Houseful boards and the amount of entertainment audience getting is relatively more than their previous experiences.

It all starts from the auctioning of players. I found it similar to campus placement jobs for fresh college outcomes. Owners of each team (preferably celebrities with lots of money) will have access to the CVs (records of past performances) of players and they chose the best (that’s what the owners think) team members from opening batsmen to tail enders. And media shows it as the first milestone of the event. Before achieved anything, the owners honor these players with a welcome trophy and goodies (This is also news for media).

The opening ceremony starts after some background tasks such as composing a theme song with owners’ appearance, designing the dress code showcasing all the sponsor’s’ logos on it, choosing the right coach (Sorry, Not one coach per team. I meant one for fielding, one for batting etc.) Wow! It’s IPL Opening Ceremony. What a platform to sell Indian film actors and celebrities to the world and international celebrities to grow their market in India. Irrespective of hit or flop, media shows the event as a grand success and promotes IPL.

The board members of IPL chose the commentators and anchors with dynamic sense of humor and criticism. Here is another opportunity for every alumni of Indian cricket team to get some money and fame. IPL commentary or game analysis doesn’t need to be a formal conversation where they analyze and discuss about the game. It’s all about entertainment.  People get entertainment from the anchors and commentators of the broadcasting channel from their songs, dances and sarcastic comments. I’ve never seen Sunil Gavaskar or Sidhu (Anyone for that matter) singing songs and dancing during the session of analyzing the play. Again it’s all about holding the viewer’s remote not to change the channel.

To make every moment to take part in the game, IPL counts every statistics of the game such as Sixes to dot balls (Every match does it but IPL publishes to make the game more interesting). For these statistics, sponsors make use to brand their products e.g. Karbonn Kamal Catch. I don’t want to comment about cheerleaders and twitter business here (You know better than me).

However, I’m glad that the business strategy of combining Cricket with entertainment is working out perfectly. Good TRP, chance to upcoming local players and retired senior players and a good time pass comes in a single package – critics might argue “IPL is not pure form of cricket and real cricketing skills will be tested only in TEST Cricket”, but in the modern generation when everything is desired to be fast, who cares, it’s all about entertainment IPL.