Creating sports brands is about right mix, patience

MUMBAI: Very rarely in sports do you see teams advertising themselves  But then, this is a changing world.

And, just like the trend in consumer goods, the country’s favourite sport is now available in convenient chota packs.

Also, slowly, new city based teams are building up fan bases, which means compelling new product categories are coming up on your TV screen. But it’s just not new cricket teams that are trying to build brands.

There is Vijay Mallya with his Force India Formula One car racing team doing so across hoardings and AV spots.

How difficult is it to create such new brands?
Experts say that of primary importance in the building process is time —- giving brands time to establish themselves.

Shailendra Singh, Joint MD, Percept Ltd, says, “It is as easy or difficult as building an allegiance with a new brand or a new movie. You never know until it releases in the market. You can have market research data and all sorts of data to corroborate your product, but the litmus test is when it enters the market.”

A look at examples of successful sporwting brands around the world shows the enormity what could be at stake.

Manchester United and the English Premier League are oft-quoted as the golden standard for these cricket leagues and their franchises. According to a report from sports marketing firm TNS Sport, ManU has a massive 330 million fans, or around 5% of the world’s population. Television money and gate-receipts excluded, money pours in from merchandising and sponsorship.

Everything from mugs and bags to credit cards is available with the clubs branding. ManU’s sponsors range from American financial services firm AIG to the Asian low-cost airline Air Asia.

It is estimated to have made a profit of about $115million on gross revenues of about half a billion. Those numbers make a compelling read from a firm whose product is football.

The popularity and the huge monetisation potential made sure that the club was valued at $1.5 billion when it was taken over by US-based businessman Malcom Glazer in 2005.

Football in England had working class origins which bred the club culture and rivalries, boosting its popularity around the world with help from television.

For the Indian Cricket League (ICL) and Indian Premier League, the success formula seems to be dollops of Hindi film masala mixed with Twenty20 cricket.

Enough to create a deep relationship with fans?

Venu Nair, Sports marketing agency World Sports Group’s South Asia chief executive says that this is not a fair comparison.

“The Manchester United brand was built over 100 years. It is easier to build brands today as long as you take the right initiatives. When ManU started there would’ve been only one newspaper. Now there are multiple channels of media which can be tapped to reach your audience.”

One such channel being advertising.

Piyush Pandey, cricket buff and head honcho of ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, says, “The mix of advertising and entertainment is intended as stimuli for people to come and experience the game. No brand can be built by advertising alone. The intention is to create a product, create an affinity, create a loyalty which finally creates fan following.”

This loyalty, the organisers of these tournaments hope, would drive people to be passionate enough to reach for their purse to buy their teams merchandising.
Force India, meanwhile, brand gurus say, is in a more advantageous position as compared to cricket. It is in a sport with which Indians are just beginning to get acquainted. As a result it has the incremental fan base all to itself.

Anmol Dar, CEO, Super Brands, says once more people are hooked on to Formula One, Force India will gain.

“There is a great deal of interest in our country, especially among the elite, for Formula One.”

Pandey adds, “Our nation is going through a phase where people are proud to see these teams in places like Formula One. Somebody is making an effort to create something new in the country. You can also call what they are doing with Force India as experimental marketing with an eye on the future.”

It does come with a catch; that of significantly improving from its current position on the grid.

Success on the field and on the racetrack is therefore the key word. Experts say that brands become icons because of the promise that they fulfill on a consistent basis.
As Nair says, “Sporting brands are based on their achievements at the end of the day.”

n_john@dnaindia.net