Businesses bank on sporting events

MUMBAI, INDIA: With the enormous success of Indian Premier League (IPL) in the past three years, every business, whether large or small, local or global, wants to get linked with it and cash in this opportunity to strengthen their market presence and push their business.

The game is changing with new technology platforms

Today, businesses are looking beyond advertisements or sponsorships of sporting events and trying to invent new business models involving customers and their emotional links with sports.

For instance, Nokia, the Kolkota Night Riders (KKR) team sponsor, has developed an interactive campaign – ‘Main Bhi Coach,’ in the form of a website to engage customers and provide them a platform for sharing cricketing strategy and ideas.

“At Nokia, we have always looked for new and innovative ways to connect with the consumer by designing interesting and engaging campaigns. Our promise is to help people feel closer to what is important to them. So, for us, it’s all about connecting people with their passions,” says Viral Oza, Nokia India’s head for Activation, Media and Online Marketing.

“In India, every fan is a self-proclaimed cricket guru and believes they can guide the team to victory if given a chance. 'Main Bhi Coach' is an opportunity for them to make their dreams come true and coach their favorite team,” Oza explains about Nokia’s campaign.

He adds, it not only opens up an interactive channel between Nokia, KKR and its fans across the country, but also lends a great opportunity for consumers to interact and perhaps even influence their team’s game play.

It’s really interesting how the adoption of technology platforms is pulling the customers. In fact, for the first time, YouTube is providing live streaming of all the 60 matches of IPL third season.

“We want to make YouTube a comprehensive destination for online video and that includes live and on-demand sports. Fans across the world love cricket and we're excited to be able to bring them IPL matches,” says Gautam Anand, YouTube’s director - Content Partnership, Japan and Asia Pacific.

With YouTube tagline ‘broadcast yourself’, Anand points out that the networking site provides a platform (broadcast platform) for anyone including aspiring athletes and mainstream sports franchises like the IPL.

“As with everything we do, we start with the user so it is important that we ensure the best possible user experience (UX). The community has defined what works in this space and we continue to innovate based on their feedback,” he adds.

According to marketing gurus, businesses always strive for large events such as sports, films and now IPL, to promote products, services and brands.

“It's become clear to marketeers that the most successful ad campaigns on the site take time to truly engage our community and to date, such advertisements have contributed positively to user experience (UX) on the site,” he explains.

As Google earns majority of revenues via online ads and promotions, Anand shares that advertisers’ response has been phenomenal. “We are pleasantly surprised by the number of marquee brands who are engaging with us in this first-of-its kind initiative.”

On the other hand, Vodafone Essar is facilitating its customers to book IPL tickets via Vodafone M-Shop, SMS and Vodafone website.

According to Vodafone Essar’s COO and head - Mobile Commerce, Rajesh Dongre, the primary objective of the company’s new initiative is customer convenience as they will not need to stand in queues for long hours to buy tickets but can just SMS or dial a toll free number to book tickets via cell phones.

“With this service, first comes customer convenience and second is retaining customers with good quality value-added service,” says Dongre.

In return of value added services of fulfilling customers convenience, if the company earns some revenue then there’s nothing wrong, he points out, adding, “But stresses that at the moment customers comes first and revenues later”.

So sporting events have become the new areas of business and customer engagements?

Absolutely!, says Oza. “We are always on a look out for new ways to reach out to the consumers. Sports is one of the platforms that we will continue to explore to connect with our most relevant audience group – the youth.”

Even Gautam agrees, “We have long maintained that distribution over the web, which is the future, and want to be part of it by providing our partners with a massive audience and an affordable, global platform to reach that audience.”

In fact, Studio18, a movie production house premiered its movie ‘Striker’ on YouTube, recently.

However, Dongre views that customers’ convenience is the primary goal and points out, “Incidentally cricket is not only the sports where Vodafone is actively participating - as we are sponsors of football, polo and F1 race internationally. Apart from cricket tickets we also offer movie tickets.”

He reckons that such initiatives lead to m-commerce that can drive business and open up distribution channels for other companies. However, he feels that, in India, the mobile commerce is slow and still at midway stage.