ITs Cricket, IPL Way

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Would it be or would it not? The suspense around IPL Season 2 had almost
assumed Hamlet-like proportions, thanks to the brinksmanship of Lalit Modi and P
Chidambaram. Add to it the hyperbole generated by the Buchanan-Ganguly and now
Gavaskar-SRK spats, the sudden cricketing aspirations of Preity Zinta, Juhi
Chawla and lo and behold, Shilpa Shetty, even in an election year IPL has become
the big tamasha the organizers probably wanted it to be anyway.

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While the hype surrounding the event has only increased since the first
season, what is commendable is the way the IPL has revolutionized the game
through its marketing and branding efforts, matching the popularity levels of
UEFA in Europe or NBA in the US. The uncertainties surrounding the event, the
slowdown, missing players, the impending elections, security concerns and even
the ultimate relocation to South Africa could not dampen the never-say-die
attitude of the IPL and its eight teams.

Instead they have forged ahead with newer ways to market themselves, garner
support and monetize offerings. And technology has played an integral role in
helping the franchisees market their team better and has served as a light at
the end of the tunnel. While the BCCI and the individual IPL teams have been
using cutting-edge technologies to bolster team performance and training, what
is more evident today is the increasing emphasis on the online and mobile
mediums for external marketing. Technology has fully helped in exploiting the
commercial aspects of cricket.

Cheerleaders were
not just about skinshow; their dance synchronization involved managing
multiple technologies
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During the previous season the teams, for the first time, had embarked on
distinctive branding and marketing strategies. Large sponsorship deals,
advertisements, signature merchandise, contests and media appearances were all
part of the deal. However, what was new to the game of cricket was that each
team built its own website, monetized offerings, explored newer technology
platforms and mediums to engage with the external audience. Concepts such as
mobile communities, web 2.0-based social networking, and virtual fan clubs were
deployed for the first time and they all won overwhelming response.

Franchisees saw this as the perfect platform to build their brands and reach
out to the regional fan base better. This year, the features on the various team
websites have not only increased but the teams are looking at providing the best
web experience to the local fans in India. There is a serious move to create
fans who will start spending time and money on the team brand, and then on
advertisers brands.

Paray paray Lorbo Re

Leading the pack is the indomitable SRKs Kolkata Knight Riders which has
not only revamped its website but added a slew of new features such as Fan Zone,
KKR TV, KKR Academy, and KKR Store (a merchandize store) as well. To take the
comparison with global sporting icons, KKR is going strongly the Manchester
United way, it seems. It also has official presence on some of the largest
social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Orkut. Not to count, a
host of active unofficial communities it has spawned across many of these sites.

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The team has also partnered with Zapak.com to create a social gaming network
with a cricket-based gaming zone and contests. This online gaming community on
the KKR website is one of the most prolific in terms of participation and
feedback. The website also has a section named SRK Blogs which is still to be
updated, which means SRK may go blogging as well to promote his IPL team.

Halla Bol, Warnie

Close on the heels of SRKs knights come the defending champions of the
Rajasthan Royals. The Rajasthan Royals have the most complete and comprehensive
website, which has a new addition of Fan Club, having its presence across social
media with communities on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and SMS GupShup. It also
has an active forum for discussions around the team called Halla Bol which is
also the title of the team song.

The latest music video featuring its new co-owner and brand ambassador,
Shilpa Shetty, was recently uploaded on YouTube and has received a large number
of hits. The Mobile Zone feature on its website, and Rajasthan Royals Mobile
Community powered by SMS GupShup, already boasts of over 25,000 members. Apart
from these, the team recently entered into a three-year partnership with TCS,
announcing the largest technology deal related to IPL. As per the partnership,
TCS, which also works with the BCCI, will not only provide software support and
analytical tools for the team to enhance its performance, but will also provide
technology support to enhance viewer experience and provide statistical,
user-friendly data in real-time over the web and mobile platforms.

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Charging with a New Look

Deccan Chargers has made a strong online presence to support its marketing
activities. The site has now been revamped to be in line with the teams new
logo, logo colors and the new brand guidelines. That apart, its website would
have additional features this season including an SMS GupShup group which
already has over 23,000 members; and 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 been formed, though
they are not as active as those of the other teams.

Not just online,
mobile too has become a popular marketing weapon for all eight teams in IPL
2

The web and mobile platforms are extremely important in our overall brand
building strategy. Specifically, both these online media would be used to keep
the fans fully informed through news, blogs, photos, videos, scores, and stats;
fully engaged through contests, games, chat rooms; and make the experience
interactive by inviting feedback, views, opinions through contests and
discussion forums, says Venkat Reddy, VP operations, Deccan Chargers Sporting
Ventures.

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IPL is embracing open source. 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 on
other appropriate technologies like Adobe Flash for interactive elements and
widgets. The team has plans to introduce mobile applications that would also be
available for download with rich interfaces.

Deccan Chargers is banking on its technology investments and is actively
measuring the number of unique visitors on its website to evaluate the success
of its marketing activities. During the inaugural season the total number of
visits was close to half a million. The approximate registered fan base across
our website and other online communities is in excess of 30,000 and growing,
says Reddy.

It is Very Preity

The Kings XI Punjab team launched its website with content focused at fans.
KXIPs mission this season is to bring the team as close to the fans as
possible, so that they are more connected than ever before with the action on
and off the field. Through the website and mobile, we are enabling fans to get
access to exclusive KXIP content created especially for them, available nowhere
else. For the first time ever, fans can go behind the scenes to be part of
exclusive locker room moments, training sessions and even after parties, says
the team spokesperson.

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Cricket about to
lock lips with glamor: Preity was not just a pretty presence, but Kings XI
were active on the tech front too

The most engaging feature on the site is exclusive Made-for-Our-Fans content.
This includes one-to-one interviews with key team members, opinions, pictures
and video postings by players themselves on the team blog, a Cheer of the
Match brought to fans by none other than Sreesanth, and regular guest columns
written exclusively for the website. To engage fans on a deeper level, KXIP has
built in a live chat feature where fans can talk one-to-one with their favorite
team players.  Entertainment wise, KXIP online is choc-a-bloc with games,
widgets, wallpapers, screen savers, polls, and contests.

Webchutney Studio, the web partner for Kings XI, has used open source web
frameworks to enable faster web application development and deployment. The team
has also partnered with Culture Mafia for providing WAP-enabled content and
mobile marketing solutions. Like Deccan Chargers, the Kings XI web marketing
team has also been tracking consumption patterns on its website. Last years
Google Analytics numbers showed that fans were logging into the website from all
over the world. Encouraged by this, the team has introduced a feature this year
called the Global Fan Club, which indicates the location of the fan as s/he
registers from a world location on a world map.

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In the Fray

The Delhi Daredevils team has pretty much continued with the same features
on its website as last year. It has an official partnership with Bigadda, which
has a sizeable Indian audience, though the group on Bigadda is still to kick-off
in a big way. This year the Delhi team has also formed an SMS GupShup community
which has over 29,000 members. The Chennai Super Kings website, on the other
hand, has a very well-updated blog and a fan zone on its websites. The team has
appointed Hyderabad-based mobile VAS company, called NOWPOW, for creating the
CSK mobile community and offer SMS update services and downloads.

The Mumbai Indians, owned by Mukesh Ambanis Reliance Industries, has not
provided many interactive features on its website as compared to other teams. It
just has a fan zone and a discussion forum with about 1,300 active users. The
team has also not forged any technology partnerships and is managing all the
website offerings and development through RILs internal IT team.The website for
Vijay Mallyas Royal Challengers team is being powered by MSN India and is
offering email ids to users. Last year the team partnered with TELiBrahma
Convergent Communications to enhance the experience of spectators. The
experience was extended to the audience who received real-time, match-related
information on their mobile handsets within the Chinnaswamy Stadium during Royal
Challengers matches.

When #1s Met:
Indias #1 IT company TCS has become the tech partner for defending
champions Rajasthan Royals

Tech Partners

This year TELiBrahma has extended its services to six of the IPL teams and
not just exclusively to the Royal Challengers. With the IPL shift to South
Africa, we are still in talks with the stadia in South Africa to offer BluFi
Bluetooth service. If the tie-ups prove to be successful, the cricket fans at
the stadium in South Africa will receive 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. We also intend to
build a mobile fan club called BlueHive exclusive to the six teams that we have
tied up with, informs Narasimha Suresh, CEO, TELiBrahma Convergent
Communications.

The Bluetooth infrastructure would also provide a unique opportunity for
brands to have an extended presence in the IPL stadium by branding the mobile
content and match-linked information pushed to the handsets of the users at the
stadium.

Just like TELiBrahma, another well known company, Sports Mechanics, has
partnered with seven IPL teams to provide mobile based applications. While
Sports Mechanics is the official training and sports analytics partner for the
teams, this year it has forayed into technology aimed at fans.

We have come up with features such as Power Play, which is a video score
card that is sent by email to the subscribers to the team websites. We are 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. We are able to generate such content because all our offerings are
connected to our analytical platform called DeepPoint, says Ramakrishnan, CEO,
Sports Mechanics.

As the chatter around the Web on the IPL increases, the fan traffic in each
of team websites and the user consumption patterns will come to the fore. This
will also be a time when the teams backend IT infrastructure will be put to the
test as platforms and offerings have become more closely integrated this year.
While, the web and mobile have served as low-cost, high-visibility platforms for
the IPL franchisees, it will be interesting to track and see how the teams use
their websites, deploy analytical tools to garner more support the coming
season. And what more is in store for IPL Season 3 even as Steyn delivers the
perfect leg cutter to Symonds.

Priya Kekre

priyak@cybermedia.co.in