Deccan Chargers : Champions Thumbs Up to IT

The Deccan Chargers team has been in the limelight for more reasons than just
being the champions of IPL season two. The Telangana issue and news of terrorist
threats from intelligence agencies led to the IPL governing body shifting
matches from Hyderabad to other venues. And the Deccan Chargers team threatened
to withdraw from IPL season three. Mass outbursts from Hyderabad based Deccan
Chargers fans finally made the IPL governing council to relent and grant two
matches to Deccan Chargers catchment area of Cuttack with promises of holding a
couple of matches later if the intelligence reports clear Hyderabad as a venue.
Online discussion forums, blogs, social networking sites all were abuzz with the
issue. Fans came out in the open to express their opinion. And in the run up to
IPL, the overwhelming support through all mediums was exactly what any publicist
could dream of. But all is not the work of chance. A lot of it can be attributed
to the teams preparedness and its use of smart technologies to connect with its
fan base.

Deccan Chargers has created a strong online presence to support its marketing
activities. The web and mobile platforms have played an extremely important role
in the teams overall brand building strategy and to keep the fans fully
informed. All the development activities and the infrastructure for the website
based technical operations are managed in house by the teams holding company,
Deccan Chargers Sporting Ventures. "After IPL 2009 season, the new additions to
the website include premium membership club registrations, online newsletters
and ads in newspapers, new goodies on site like provision to create a post card
for the fans to create a combination of their own photos with the players
photo, exciting online games, simulation of live match, contests like referral
scheme for premium memberships, win with a caption, lucky draws based on
registrations to meet the Chargers, etc," says Gomati Vishwanathan, web
specialist, Deccan Chargers Sporting Ventures.

Interactive, and Integrated

That apart, its website has retained earlier features including a Chargers
Lounge section which has a graphitti board, a discussion forum, games, scores
and other information feeds. Online communities across social networking groups
have also become more popular this year. Deccan Chargers and SMS GupShup have
come together to create a mobile community platform, called DC, where fans can
become members free of cost and interact with the players, coach and the team
management. "They can subscribe to receive team updates, including messages
directly from players and coaches, can ask questions, submit suggestions and
send wishes to their favourite players," says Beerud Sheth, CEO, SMS Gupshup.
Moreover, members can participate in quiz contests, games and win prizes,
including tickets to matches, as well as discuss and debate with other fans.
They can also download team-related mobile content including ring tones, and
wallpapers. On Orkut, Youtube and Facebook, both official and unofficial
communities of the IPL teams are seeing a surge of new members. With the IPL
still a few days away, Deccan Chargers has over 6,477 fans on Facebook and about
53,361 members on Orkut. While all the teams have taken to Twitter(ing) already,
Deccan chargers seems to have taken a lead with over 2,500 followers and around
3,007 Tweets. Moreover, the team has its own blog on blogspot.com.

The team has taken to open source technologies for all its online and mobile
platforms. The Deccan Chargers website has been built on an open source CMS
platform called Drupal, implemented on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack
and is presently the most popular open source content management system to build
the community portals. The website also leverages other appropriate technologies
like Adobe Flash for interactive elements and widgets. The team is also in the
process of introducing mobile applications that would also be available for
download with rich interfaces. It has also invested in mobiles and laptops for
players to check their game strategies and remain connected with their team
members and fans.

Sports Mechanics and Power Play

While the team has put in place a robust online and social media strategy,
it has also tied up with a sports technology company named Sports Mechanics for
forming team strategies, analysing player performance and preparing tools for
coaches and trainers. "SportsMechanics provides solutions to DC that improves
the efficiency of the players by identifying strengths and weaknesses of our
team and also the opposition. In order to make sure the analysis is accurate,
speedy and authentic, we implement many technologies that are cutting edge,"
says Unnikrishnan, video analyst, Deccan Chargers Sporting Ventures. Some of the
solutions provided by SportsMechanics include cutting-edge analysis tools like
database querying systems and statistical models to generate various types of
intelligence; generation of new-age statistical reports to give further
in-sights; live information that is made available to the coaching staff using
software tools; use of new media devices like iPods, PSPs, etc, in order to
serve information in a user-friendly manner, etc. "This year, we have come up
with new features and products such as a predictive engine to form team
strategies and a tool to calculate player efficiency index. We are also
providing the IPL franchisees help with their web analytics for the first time.
In addition, we are looking at providing solutions to the team to help them bid
for the right set of players during the IPL auctions in October," explains S
Ramakrishnan, CEO, Sports Mechanics.

While Sports Mechanics is the official training and sports analytics partner
for the team, it has also forayed into technology aimed at fans. It offers
features such as Power Play, which is a video score card that is sent by email
to the subscribers inbox. It is also offering mobile applications such as Free
Hits and Cricket at the Edge, which provide replay features and customized
messages related to the game to the users. The team has also tied up with
TeliBrahma Comvergent Communications to offer cricket fans at the stadium BluFi
Bluetooth service which will push content related to the forecast of the match,
pitch report, team composition, video clips, trivia and updates at every turn of
the event during the match on their mobile handsets. It has also formed a mobile
fan club called BlueHive that is exclusive to just a few other IPL teams.

Another recent big development is Idea Cellular becoming the principal
partners and official sponsors of Deccan Chargers team. Announcing the
partnership, Pradeep Shrivastava, chief marketing officer, Idea Cellular, says,
"Going with our essential brand promise of bringing champion ideas through the
power of mobility, we have partnered with the Champions of IPL to offer cricket
entertainment by the Deccan Chargers to our 60 mn subscribers across the
country." All the twenty-seven key players of Team Deccan Chargers will wear
Brand Idea logo on the front of their jersey and trousers during the upcoming
IPL 3 T-20 Tournament. Idea further plans to launch a range of value added
services on Voice, SMS and WAP portal, for 60 mn subscribers across the country
to bring them closer to the Deccan Chargers. Idea subscribers will get a chance
to win tickets for the matches, autographed merchandize, participate in Meet
and Greet with the players, download special player messages, etc.

In the runup to the IPL, a lot more can be expected from this Hyderabad based
team to retain its #1 title.

Priya Kekre

priyak@cybermedia.co.in