Sports Bureau
The 15th edition of the forthcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) as the biggest cricket carnival of the year is only days away. The detailed itinerary or timetable of the IPL will be out in a few days as the formal release by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is awaited at any time.
Reports suggest that the IPL 2022 will commence on 27th March 2022 and conclude on 28th May 2022. The IPL 22 is expected to be played across six venues in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and Pune.
The BCCI will soon release the detailed schedule of the IPL by the end of February. In the IPL 2022, 10 teams are participating. In the players' auction, 204 players were hired for Rs 551.7 crore.
During the tournament, the 10 teams will be split into two groups of 5 teams each and all the teams in a group to face each other at least twice. And every team has to take on one team from the other group twice. Then each side will face the teams of the other group again during the league stage. It means each team will play 14 matches in the league stages.
The league matches, numbering 70 will be mostly in Maharashtra before shifting to Ahmedabad for the playoff stages. The venues in Mumbai will include Wankhede Stadium, Brabourne Stadium, DY Patil Sports Stadium, and the Jio Stadium.
In the last of IPL 2021, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) won the title at the final in Dubai beating Kolkata Knight Riders.
The mega event of BCCI
As far as the BCCI is concerned ‘IPL’ is a flagship event and a cash cow. As the world’s richest cricket board and richest sporting body of India, BCCI needs no government funds as it takes many revenue streams, including ICC income share, media rights, and sponsorship rights. Among them, Media rights are the lion's share of the revenue and the bulk of it accrues from the IPL. Meanwhile, the media rights revenue of BCCI in the next IPL cycle of 2023-27 will quadruple. It can touch Rs 500 billion ($6.7 billion), according to news reports.
Jay Shah, secretary, BCCI noted that the aspirational value of Brand IPL has surpassed the expectations of everyone after two more teams joined IPL taking the total number to 10 teams.
The IPL players' selection was held in Banglore on Feb 12, 13.
The 10 IPL teams
• Mumbai Indians
• Chennai Super Kings
• Kolkata Knight Riders
• Delhi Capitals
• Punjab Kings
• Rajasthan Royals
• Royal Challengers Bangalore
• Sunrisers Hyderabad
• Gujarat Titans
• Lucknow Super Giants
Team captains
Most team captains are the Who is Who in the cricket world. MS Dhoni leads the Chennai Super Kings while Rohit Sharma captains Mumbai Indians.
Shreyas Iyer will captain Kolkata Knight Royals (KKR). Rishabh Pant will be the skipper of Delhi Capitals while Sanju Samson will lead Rajasthan Royals. Hardik Pandya will be the skipper of Gujarat Titans and KL Rahul will lead the Lucknow Supergiants.
Shikhar Dhawan will be the captain of Punjab Kings and Kane Williamson will lead Sunrisers Hyderabad. Francois Du Plessis will be the skipper of Royal Challengers Bangalore. Virat Kohli quit the captaincy of RBC in 2021 but Kohli will remain part of the team.
The IPL franchise owners include Mukesh Ambani (Mumbai Indians), N. Srinivasan (Chennai Super Kings), Parth Jindal (Delhi Capitals), Shahrukh Khan (Kolkota Knight Riders), Kalanidhi Maran (Sun Risers, Hyderabad), Manoj Badhale (Rajasthan Royals), Anand Kripalu (Royal Challengers, Bangalore), Preity Zinta and others (Punjab Royals).
Among the two new teams in IPL 22, Lucknow Super Giants is owned by the RP Sanjiv Goenka Group, while Gujarat Titans’ has CVC Capital as owners.
The IPL player's selection was held in Bangalore on Feb 12, 13 where the 10 IPL franchises selected their squad. In the auction, Ishan Kishan was the costliest player; bought by the Mumbai Indians for Rs 15.25 crores and Deepak Chahar (Rs14 crores) hired by Chennai Super Kings was the most expensive bowler.
IPL branding opportunity for businesses
Meanwhile, IPL is set to help a large segment of businesses and brands. Marketers are also excited by the Over Top platforms (OTT) bonanza that opens golden opportunities.
Along with social media channels, OTT platforms have also risen to be a formidable part of the IPL shows connecting the brands and viewers.
IPL tournament matches are screened over OTT platforms like Hotstar offering marketers the opportunity to grab mass attention to promote brands via smart advertising. The popularity of OTT platforms is up and by 2023, Indian OTT marketing will reach 100 million viewers online.
Hotstar is quite popular as an OTT platform and has more than 300 million active subscribers. All IPL matches are streamed to paid subscribers.
For marketers, there is no better opportunity than this to create brand awareness. IPL screening further jacks up viewership.
The expansive viewership is a greater opportunity in reaching out to a target audience and hikes brand awareness massively compared to all other channels for advertising.
Rational rates mean a better ROI plus a large audience with the promise of more sales and fulfillment of other business goals. The audience demography suggests a good mix with buying capacity, including annual travelers who constitute 60 percent of the audience, monthly online shoppers, investors in the stock market, and paid subscribers.
Given the fact that each IPL match has more than 2000 seconds of “Ad inventory”, it is a great window for brands to showcase their ads. IPL matches also give a high engagement rate in the pre and post-shows. Even the highlights are ahead in viewer engagement rates.
The diverse options for IPL Ad spend can include the following although rates are subject to change.
- Average 10-second ad slot rates for television and digital advertising: Rs.8-10 lakhs.
- Average spend on team sponsorship: Rs.30-50 crores
- On-field advertising like ground painting: Rs.1 crore Plus
- Merchandising advertisement: Rs.30 lakhs to Rs 1 crore
- Stadium advertising: Rs.50 lacs Plus
For marketers, IPL is a vast, diverse market good enough to reach an audience with a custom approach to the right segments in a cost-effective manner.
