Cricket’s share in biz cracking up

WHILE sports management agencies and brand marketers cry foul over Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) pulling the plug on the Rs 80-crore cricket endorsement market, BCCI’s googly may turn to someone’s advantage after all. Cricketers’ loss will be Bollywood stars (regional actors included) gain, who anyway command around 70% of the Rs 250-crore celebrity endorsement market. And then there is the newly-announced Essel Group-backed Indian Cricket League (ICL), which is also being explored as a likely option by celebrity management agencies such as Percept D’ Mark. Further, many a marketer are looking at other sports — golf, Formula 1, tennis and shooting — to bring up new stars in a cricket-short endorsement market. There are talks of an escalation in endorsement fee of the top three cricketers —Tendulkar, Ganguly and Sehwag. “Besides overall rates going up in a scenario like this, second and third-rung brands would either drop cricket as a platform, if it’s not integral to their brand, or might open doors to Bollywood,” says Mindshare MD Sundar Raman. Percept D’Mark which handles cricketers such as Saurav Ganguly, Sreesanth and Yuvraj Singh, sees an opportunity in ICL and has already begun a dialogue with Subhash Chandra’s parallel league, fully realising that it’s still early days for ICL. “In any sport, if you have two leagues, there will be a larger market at different price points. There are some discussions under way with the ICL. At the end of the day, sport must deliver, whether its BCCI or ICL,” says Percept D’Mark CEO Preeta Singh. “Though we’re not in confrontation with BCCI, we are engaging in dialogue with players and their managers,” says Zee Sports business head Himanshu Mody. With a dismal performance of Team India at the Caribbeans, and the current fracas over player’s endorsement, there are fears of cricket’s share in the overall endorsement market falling to a meagre 10%. “In 1999, 90% of endorsement money went into cricket, by 2003 it became 50-60%, now its under 30% and it will drop to 10% sooner than expected,” says Anirban Blah, VP, Globosport, which handles Zaheer Khan, Dinesh Karthik and Robin Uthappa. Currently, the total cricket advertising monies is pegged at around Rs 350 crore plus per annum. In comparison, the total market for brand endorsers — everyone included — in the country is pegged at Rs 250-crore, according to CelebZ, a recent study by Group M’s Mindshare Insights. Bollywood which totals up almost 70% of the endorsement, including the South Indian stars, is already very large. The endorsement rate, per brand, for Chiranjeevi (over Rs 1 crore) is higher than an average Bollywood film star. In fact, brands may look at regional stars as an alternative to cricket, say celebrity agents. Regional film actresses and actors charge anything from Rs 25-45 lakh per brand. “No cricket endorsements were anyway in the pipeline as it will take sometime before a brand would want to bet on cricket. But BCCI’s directives anyway would jeopardise the new players because the existing contracts remain. This would result in marginalisation of some players,” says Collage Sports Management’s Latika Khaneja. Her company handles Virender Sehwag. Obviously, marketers big on cricket and cricketers are tight lipped, and are keeping their cards close to the chest until they have read the BCCI fine-print. When contacted by ET, Nike marketing director Sanjay Gangopadhyay said: “We will await formal communication from the BCCI on the proposed action plan and then will be able comment on the matter.” Besides Sreesanth and Zaheer Khan, Nike’s world cup commercial features Ryan Ninan and Uday Kaul who have represented India in the Under 19 team. Even PepsiCo India says it will make required adjustments if needed.

Courtesy: EconomicTimes