With 6 sponsor logos on average, IPL players are walking billboards

Ever since I moved in with my grandmother converting her into a sports fan has been my life’s mission. Not having found much success in diverting her attention from her saas-bahu shows to sports, I have started taking joy in small wins. One of these wins came recently when she offered to watch an IPL game with me. Chuffed with myself, I thought this time we must go slightly beyond the usual – I decided to help my grandmother decode field placements. Pointing to the screen I told her to focus her attention at the point and cover region. Before I could start dispensing technical jargon she bowled me over by referring to the players as “those walking billboards”. With six sponsor logos on an average, she was right- the average cricketer in the IPL does look like a mobile billboard. [caption id=“attachment_1503327” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Ads, ads everywhere. BCCI[/caption] In a world where brands are constantly jostling to get consumer attention, jersey sponsorship has to be a master stroke. The brand becomes a part of “the action” and imbibes the characteristics of the team. A hard core sports fan is like a religious fanatic – most brands hope that some of these fanatics cross over and move from supporting just the team to supporting its team of sponsors. The history of jersey sponsorship is linked to the history of consumer culture and advertising. According to sports anthropologist Orin Starn, until the 1950s most t-shirts were sold with concealed brand marks and logos; only those t-shirts which were given out as freebies had huge company logos/names displayed across them. As times change, so do sensibilities. Through innovative marketing, and a possible stroke of genius, companies breathed life into their brands, giving them a unique personality and meaning of their own. For instance, Nike, which was just another sports brand, now stood for something and made the consumer feel a certain way when they put on a t-shirt with a swoosh on it. Consumers started paying a premium for the snob value attached with certain brands. The marketers could be pardoned for a smirk on their faces; they had after all not only convinced people to buy their product for 4x the market price, they had also converted them into walking billboards for their brands. As the average person on the street was getting comfortable sporting logos all over their wardrobes, the sports jersey was undergoing a metamorphosis too. Most sports historians credit a Uruguayan football club, Peñarol, with introducing the concept of jersey sponsorship to the sports world during the 1950s. However, as is the case with most changes this move too was resisted with most leagues vehemently opposing the idea. By 1970s European clubs warmed up to jersey sponsorship with Eintracht Braunschweig (German Bundesliga) sporting the Jagermeister logo across its players’ chests and Kettering Town (English Southern League) signing a multi-year jersey sponsorship deal with a tyre company. As time went by, both the sponsors and the sports teams realized the advantages of jersey sponsorship. A recent study by Forbes stated “that corporate sponsorships on sports jerseys could generate more than $370 million in advertising value”. It is simple to understand that the logos on the jersey are constantly being viewed thereby becoming a part of the subconscious mind of the viewer/consumer leading to higher brand recall, for instance Aircel sponsored Chennai Super Kings and the country knows Aircel is a mobile service provider. At the same time these deals provide professional sports teams a great source of revenue – remember Manchester United’s $131 million four year deal with AON? While cricket is still not in the same sponsorship league as football, it has come a long way considering it opened up to the idea of jersey sponsors only in the late 1990s. The BCCI recognized the value of this kind of “advertising “and permitted a maximum of 10 sponsors’ logos to appear on the jersey of an IPL team. On an average, this permits a franchise to make about Rs 30-35 crore by selling various spaces on the jersey. In the world of IPL where on field results are analyzed as closely as off field balance sheets - the IPL has ensured that the NASCARization of cricket is here to stay.