30 March 2011

The troika of match, money and marketing All the cricket buffs along with not so ardent fans like me are engulfed in a colossal wave of concern as to what the outcome will be of today's India-Pakistan match. Everyone will be in a state of tumult or near hysteria when the cricketing world's arch-rivals India and Pakistan will face each other in the World Cup semi-final at Mohali today. Work will take a backseat for everyone….everyone but marketers that is! The India-Pakistan World Cup cricket semi-final is here, and advertisers have turned this imminent match into a one-shot solution for brands. Today is the day when brands will either be glorified within a day or mummified (pun intended). The creative bunch has come up with catchy one liners in order to spin the company’s image. I only hope that this spin yields result as hundreds of crores of rupees are riding on this cricketing phenomenon. The bouncy taglines like LIC: great partnerships are built on trust, Oakley sunglasses: Go beyond boundaries, Religare: face every health googly with confidence, Axe deodorant: When the match ends, your game begins, etc are not only engaging but are also strongly emphasizing the brands importance. The mercury is rising, and it is not just the temperature, official broadcaster ESPN STAR Sports (ESS) is understood to have increased advertising rates five-fold for the match. According to media buyers, ESS is charging between Rs 15 lakh to Rs 18 lakh for a 10-second ad slot during the match, five to six times higher than what the official broadcaster charged last-minute advertisers during the league and quarter-final matches. Ticket prices have shot up 10-fold in the grey market and hotels are full, with a surge in demand at the venue, Mohali, close to Chandigarh. A ‘chair block’ ticket at the stadium which was officially sold for Rs 500 was being traded for Rs 5,500-6,000 today in the grey market. The stadium at Mohali has a seating capacity of 27,500. Around 14,000 tickets were sold over the counter on March 21-22, and the rest were booked by the International Cricket Council, the Board of Control for Cricket in India and corporate bodies. Sources estimate over half the tickets sold over the counter are being traded in the grey market. Another group is having the time of their lives by engaging in illegal betting, the bets being placed on the semi-final cricket match today at Mohali. In the last four days alone, bets of Rs 1,000 crore were placed on the match, taking the tally thus far to Rs 4,500 crore. The Indian team is the favourite at 55 paise and for the Pakistan team it is Rs 1.60 that is, for every rupee placed on the Indian team, the person gets Rs 1.55 if India wins. Similarly, if Pakistan wins, the person gets Rs 2.60. Placing of bets and the disbursal of the winnings are all clandestine operations, with bookies not entertaining strangers. The political leaders have ventured into the power play domain with Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani travelling to India to watch the match between the two South Asian rivals in what is dubbed as “cricket diplomacy”. Well, we can only hope that this visit yields results unlike the last one. The players are straddled between their own expectations and the petulant and overwhelming expectations of the masses. It's impossible not to feel for the players, all 22 of them. The players must be under tremendous stress to perform-for the sake of their country, their pride and also to keep up their brand value. It is no point pretending that this is just another match. It is the semi-final of the World Cup. And it's between India and Pakistan. Between them, there has been Partition, three wars, Suspicion, Animosity, Kashmir, also diplomacy, Politics and Attempted reconciliation. Cricket can never expect to fully free itself of the web of history. We can only hope that the kaleidoscope of changing trends somehow succeeds in bridging all the lacunae. Well on the concluding note I would like to say that rather than raging a war under the visage of cricket, let us try to unite hearts with this marvel of a match.