Royal Challengers Bangalore : A ROYAL BUSINESS

IPL season one was a huge disappointment for the Royal Challengers of
Bangalore, from being called a test match side to merely managing a seventh
place in a league of eight teamsthey had to endure the huge disappointment.
Being the second costliest team, they had to think outside the box, and they
did. In contrast to their image during the debut IPL match, there was a huge
buzz about this years Royal Challengers even before the season three started.
This turnaround in response can be attributed to a number of factors.

In addition to getting their branding strategy right, which was a big
dampener during season one, giving the brand ambassador Katrina Kaif more
visibility and the teams cheerleaders a place on the teams website, Vijay
Mallyas team also decided on building a serious social media strategy to
connect with every Royal Challengers fan out there.

Up Close and Personal

If we have a look at the website of all the IPL teams, that of RCB stands
out mainly because of its personalized blog features. There is a RC community
blog managed by a lady named Aparna, and South Indian actress Ramya (who is also
one of the brand ambassadors) too maintains a blog on the website. There are
regularly updated team news and individual pages for every player. The team
profile page as well as the players profile page has a fan-count and an option
to become the fan of the player. There is information related to their
non-cricketing activities and more. All this information is also linked or
tagged to Facebook and Twitter and can be shared by the fan community all over
the web. The website owned by Royal Challengers Sports Club is powered by MSN
India and offers email IDs to users. It is operated by digital agency,
Experience Commerce on a daily basis and allows fans to register as a Club RCB
Fan and create their own profile, contribute content, comment on others
content, participate in contests or other activities that get announced over
time.

Another unique feature this year on the website is Game for Green which is
the teams drive to go green. Under this initiative fans are invited to join the
RCB Bus Club to promote bus travel in the city of Bengaluru. The team has also
done a fantastic job with their Facebook page (with over 7,000 fans) and has
increased their presence on Twitter with an engaging profile. Maintaining both
social networking sites in tandem, the team has been posting all competition
announcements, videos and pictures to garner more hits. The conversation on
Twitter also seems two-way and has managed to create conversations around the
team and players rather than just the match results or IPL related
announcements. This is quite unlike the other teams

Among the other high profile tie-ups include the teams association with
YouTube for exclusive broadcasting rights. Just prior to the IPL season three,
Google India announced its advertising partners for live streaming of the IPL
matches on YouTube. Among other large corporate brands such as HSBC India and HP
India, Royal Challengers also led the line-up as sponsors. Royal Challengers
Bangalore will grab the spotlight during the final match of the tournament.
Vijay Mallya maintained that visibility on digital media was an important
element to reach out to an increasingly tech-savvy youth audience. "YouTube is
providing us a whole new avenue to engage with our audiences wherever they are,"
he said.

Royal Treat

Apart from a web strategy, the team also has forged partnerships to improve
the in-stadia experience for fans. Royal Challengers Bangalore was the first
team to partner with TELiBrahma Convergent Communications and Sportingmindz to
enhance the experience of spectators.  The cricket fans at the stadium 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. TELiBrahma has also built a mobile fan club
called BlueHive for the team. Sportingmindz as a sports technology partner is
providing the analytical content. 22 Yardz and SKRUTiN are the companys
flagship products for performance analysis. 22 Yardz is the match analysis suite
with statistics and video analysis integrated for player analysis. 22 Yardz is
also used by the Royal Challengers Bangaloreone of the first to embrace
performance analysis in Twenty20 cricket.

Priya Kekre

priyak@cybermedia.co.in