MUMBAI: How have the businesses of brands, advertisers and the allied industry changed since the advent of one of the most popular sporting events -- IPL. The net realisation of IPL property has gone up by five per cent despite the depreciation of the rupee against the US dollar.

Started in 2008, IPL success has been a catalyst for the T20 boom across the sporting world. But, for India, it was the beginning of a journey towards being a sporting nation. In short, the IPL has proved to a true game-changer -- with distinct pre-and post IPL eras of sports marketing. It has added a new word to India's vocabulary: Sport-ainment!

IPL may see leading sports broadcasters such as Sony Pictures Network India (SPNI) and Star Sports invest over US$ 2 billion to pocket broadcast rights. Duff & Phelps is however expecting the broadcast and digital rights for IPL in next five years to go beyond $2 billion.

Duff & Phelps 2017 report indicates 26 per cent growth in IPL brand values to USD 5.3 billion compared to USD 4.2 billion last year, boosted by the renewed Vivo title sponsorship deal at Rs 22 billion. A team of 6-7 persons worked on the report which also includes Duff & Phelps London MD Trevor Birch who was also the CEO of Chelsea FC. (As per Brand Finance, however, the value of IPL system grew by nine per cent in 2017 to $3.8 million.)

Digital content is becoming a strong medium of social media engagement for the sports viewers. The number of tweets pertaining to the IPL has crossed 8.5 million and continues to grow.
"In the span of next five years, it is a possibility that digital will reign over television, television will remain where it is -- which means there would neither be significant growth nor fall. To give an example, Sony’s ad revenues crossed INR 13 billion this year with 10 per cent increase from last years ad revenue, while Hotstar’s ad revenues from IPL rose to Rs 1.2 billion, more than double the previous year," Duff & Phelps MD Santosh N told Indiantelevision.com.

The brand value of the individual teams have risen 34 per cent on an average in 2017 compared to 2016. The net realisation of IPL property has gone up by five per cent in the overall value of IPL business.

Talking about the changes IPL is making to accelerate its growth in coming years, Duff & Phelps MD Varun Gupta said, "IPL is doing great when it comes to audience penetration -- viewership in rural areas is going up, significantly. Focusing on international markets is making IPL capture eyeballs in different countries. With Afghanistan players playing for different franchises, it has added Afghani viewers too -- for example."

IPL 2017 also ascended to new heights, with nearly 45 per cent of viewership coming from rural India.

Talking about the ad revenue "Cricket is heavily leading with 80 per cent and the remaining is from other sports. India is a cricketing nation, the fact is -- it has many slots for ads, everytime a wicket falls between the overs and the time outs,” Santosh added.

Speaking on the competition among players bidding , "On the television side, the clash is between Sony and Star, but, in the digital space, Amazon, Jio and Hotstar are going to have a tough fight," Gupta added.

About whether advertisers are moving to digital, Santosh added, "Every advertiser is looking at the ROI, with digital advertising you can structure it in a better way which is not possible in a linear TV.”

As per Maxus, a total of approximately six million mentions on social media were registered in the 10th season, more than twice those of the last season (approximately 3.1 million mentions). Mumbai Indians had an incredibly successful digital media strategy, attracting over 83 million engagements across Facebook (50 million), Instagram (29 million) and Twitter (3.95 million).
"Merchandising continues to be a challenging aspect in India, their needs to be a better understanding as in how to license your brand to maximise revenues, its an area where international franchise has also struggled with and they got it right in the past 5-6 years,” Gupta added.

Brand finance is an independent branded business valuation and strategy consultancy which has also compiled a report on IPL brand value in 2017. Comparing the data of Duff & Phelps and Brand Finance, Duff and Phelps have Mumbai Indians(MI) on the top with brand value of $106 million in 2017 and 36 per cent increase compared to last year followed by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) with $99 million gaining 29 per cent brand value. Royal challengers Bangalore with 31 per cent increase sits at third position with $88 million.

Whereas, Brand Finance (UK) has KKR on top with $58.6 million and 24 per cent increase in brand value followed by MI with 17 per cent hike and $54.1 million. SunRisers Hyderabad has placed itself at third position with $46.5 million and 23 per cent hike. RCB is on the fourth position with only 4 per cent increase and $44.4 million as its brand value.  

About the difference in the reports, Gupta said, "This involves a lot of primary and secondary research, it might be possible that we interacted with different stake-holders. The methodology might be different from ours: we use income and royalty approach to arrive at our final output."

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