Mumbai Indians : MUMBAI MAGIC

Mukesh Ambanis Reliance Industries owned Mumbai Indians, until last year,
was behind the other teams in adopting online and mobile media activities. The
website was pretty dull and lacked interactive features except for a fan zone
and a discussion forum which had only about 1,300 active users.

The fact that RILs internal IT team has been MIs technology partner kept it
away from any other technology partnerships last year. But at the same time, the
team could really not leverage on the advantages one has with a competent
internal IT team. And before season three started there was a minor setback for
Mumbai Indiansthe ex-CIO of Reliance Industries, Ashish Chauhan, who had taken
over as the CEO of the franchisee left the organization to join the Bombay Stock
Exchange as deputy CEO.

A Novel Experience

This year the Mumbai Indians have tried to bridge some of these gaps with a
completely revamped website. The team has tied up with MSN India and the latter
is managing the online presence of the Mumbai Indians team by setting up,
managing and maintaining the official website. MSN India will also produce
content for the Mumbai Indians website, and develop and implement strategies to
monetize the content on the website. The revenue generated will be shared
between MSN India and the Mumbai Indians team owners.

The effort has resulted in a website which is more feature rich and
interactive. Understanding the importance of social networking sites to attract
todays youth brigade, and how technology is vital to market a glam event like
IPL, MI has put links of popular sites like Twitter and Facebook in its website.
It also contains links of niche social networking sites like, Digg, Stumbleupon,
Delicious and Technorati. It has also created a separate zone for the same in
its website.

Neeta Ambani is known for her CSR initiatives...in fact MI is the only IPL
team that has dedicated a separate corner for such an initiative in its official
website. Called Education For All, it advocates the cause of education for
underpriviledged children. Promoted by all MI players like Sachin, Zaheer and
Harbhajan Singh. To support the cause, the visitors can purchase a Rs 40
wristband by clicking on a link which takes him/her to the Bookmyshow.com
website.

To sell tickets online, MI has further partnered with Bookmyshow.com. The CCI
Stadium in Mumbai has theater style individual seat numbers for all Mumbai
Indians matches, a first in the history of Indian Cricket. Professional ushers
will ensure that all customers are guided to the allocated seats. Customers can
view the entire layout of the stadium and choose tickets as per their preference
when they book online for Mumbai Indians matches.

Mumbai Paltan is a link in the website which takes the visitors to blogs,
downloads, messages, games and other such stuff for the fans. However, compared
to other teams, the blog seems less inteactive and doesnt involve regular
internal bloggers in the form of some of the leading players. The absence of an
interactive community blog and a proper fan community is what MI needs to take
care of.

Piyali Guha

piyalig@cybermedia.co.in