Indian Premier League - The Money Trail!!

 
  
     Indian  Premier  League  –  The  Money  
     Trail!!  

                                                  

 
  
Indian Premier League – The Money Trail!!

Background

The discussion in the current year has shifted from Will the Indian Premier League(IPL) be
successful? Is it a good cricket promoting (read: business) model? to Why the IPL is so
successful? Why are players getting so much money that it is spoiling them? To the cynics, IPL
is just a showdown of glamour and money.

Well true! It indeed involves a lot of money. Money that can support Indian Govt. being saved
from inflation, money that can save United States from some of the debt crisis, money that can
help our neighboring countries reach the global stage and money that can help us build a better
planet. But strangely so, all the money is still pumped in the IPL.

Indian Premier League (IPL) has taken the average Indian by storm. It is arguably the most loved
sporting event in the country and definitely the most watched sporting event. With an estimated
brand value of over $5billion, the four year old baby of Board of Control for Cricket in India is
fast having an impact on other industries. The sheer amount of excitement generated by the event
is so huge that it is attracting everyone: the government, the top cricketing players from the
world (so much so the retired ones), cricket control bodies around the world and the more than 1
billion Indian fans.

Our Indian business enterprises are fast realizing the value of this sporting event to impact their
brands with there being no dearth of companies lined up for being an event sponsor, team
sponsor or an advertiser. This paper aims to measure the impact of these investments made in
advertising during the Indian Premier League on the Brand Equity of the advertisers.

Key Objectives

The main objective of this paper is to discuss how Indian Premier League is serving a great
purpose to businesses around the world. How the glamour and gala surrounding this event poses
more positive impact on the brand equity of the advertisers and how the market landscape has
changed as new brands are born owing to a successful marketing campaign during the league.

  

 
  
Research Methodology

A research was carried out for multiple leading consumer electronics brands in India so as to
measure the impact of the television commercials, released during IPL, on the brand equity. The
research was carried out among the Socio-Economic classes A and B which were the target
consumers for the brands products.

A questionnaire, tracking key performance indicators of brand equity, was developed and an
online study was carried out in two phases – The pre-IPL phase, which would serve as the
benchmarking wave and the second one, post-IPL. A huge amount of survey data was collected
in a short period of time.

A representative sample of registered panelists with a leading Indian online panel was surveyed
for each phase of the study. Collecting data online has a few distinct advantages:

     •   The study can be launched quickly and a decent sample can be collected within 3-4 days,
         from across the country.
     •   It is imperative to collect feedback from respondents in the same/similar media in which
         you are advertising – i.e. conduct online interviews with respondents for your online
         advertising, facebook campaigns, hoardings in business districts (net savvy professionals)
         and tv commercials advertising about online websites/promotions.

Key Insights

The research put forward many interesting findings, the foremost being that effective advertising
during IPL impacts the brand equity favorably. The results were later mapped to the sales
figures of the organizations and the accuracy of the results was further established.

The Brand equities of the major advertisers saw a shift post-IPL. The company with the most
effective advertising campaign showed proportional improvement in the brand equity. Typically
the advertisements with superstars (mainly movie and cricket stars) tend to perform well with
Indian audience, which was also verified by the performance for the various commercials.

  

 
  
The competitive landscape of the consumer electronics industry also changed with some of the
brands gaining brand health because of the effective advertising campaign and some of the new
brands entering the market with an effective marketing launch during the Indian Premier League.

Empirical Data used in this paper

The paper uses the following data to evaluate the findings:

     •   Key Brand Equity Performance Indicators pre and post IPL for the consumer electronic
         brands
     •   Advertising performances of the television ads for various advertisements during IPL

Future Research Implications

The research can be developed further with an additional objective to track and compare the
changes in brand equity of event sponsors, team sponsors and advertisers during the IPL.
Potential benefits from the same can be:

     •   This would help the sponsors and advertisers to measure the impact of their advertising
         campaign and evaluate vis-à-vis the investments made on the players
     •   Also, it would help compare the impact of event sponsors, team sponsors and advertisers
         and an informed decision can me made by an organization to choose one of the three
         mentioned ways to launch their marketing campaign
     •   Team owners, brand owners and the sponsors also get a chance to understand if
         consumers relate with their brand ambassadors in the way they intend to
     •   The results would also help the sports marketing firms and the television right holders to
         charge appropriate fees for the campaigns

Also, this research can be replicated to track brand equity and advertising impact during various
other sporting events.

Conclusion

With organized sports becoming a mainstream industry, investors will soon start asking more
detailed and specific questions about the return on advertising, so these metrics are expected to

  

 
  
mature at a faster pace in the coming years and there will be more demand for in-depth sports
analytics.
  
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