Will WPL present a return on funding?

Out of hundreds of responses, 80 per cent named a male cricketer, the corporate revealed on Monday as they introduced a tie-up with India’s all-format captain Harmanpreet Kaur.

Signing one of many greatest feminine stars is sensible with the Women’s Premier League (WPL) simply across the nook. Rs 5,651 crore was spent not too long ago to purchase the broadcasting and franchise rights of the league and its 5 groups.

Yet in a intelligent advertising and marketing promo the reply to the ‘guess it’ query pointed to the plain proven fact that regardless of her rising reputation, Harmanpreet nonetheless performs cricket within the shadow of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. The packaging of WPL as the ladies’s model of the vastly in style Indian Premier League (IPL) is not any assure that followers, together with their loyalty to the lads’s sport, will watch it in stadiums or at their houses.

Like each start-up, WPL has its unknowns.

With a separate window earlier than the IPL, he must stand on his toes.

Viacom18 is paying the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) Rs 7.09 crore per WPL sport, which is a fraction of what it pays for the digital rights of IPL video games. The five-year WPL deal value Viacom Rs 18,951 crore, which, in keeping with a veteran broadcaster, is a punt.

“If I were still in the broadcast business, I’d say WPL is a good boat to miss, because if it succeeds, it doesn’t change the universe. If it fails, it’ll hurt your balance sheet.” will lengthen. The WPL just isn’t a should. It will get one-fourth or one-fifth of the lads’s sport,” said Harish Thawani, founder of Nimbus Sport, the former rights-holder of Indian cricket. “But will it utterly Is it going to flop? My reply is ‘no’. But is it going to be a kind of issues to sit up for like the lads’s IPL?”

Industry watchers say the extent of the success of the WPL’s first season will decide whether or not Viacom overpays for the printed rights.

Vineet Karnik, Head of Sports, Esports & Entertainment, GroupM (South Asia), was the advisor to Royal Challengers Bangalore, one of many three IPL groups that efficiently bid for a WPL aspect.

“Take the instance of IPL. After the primary few years, the worth of media rights corrected upwards. This occurred as a result of IPL turned a profitable media property giving excessive attain and viewership. So girls’s cricket will should be constructed from the underside up and marketed effectively. The first season goes to be crucial in figuring out the worth Viacom pays for the media rights,” Karnik mentioned.

Will extra girls watch?

If Viacom/Reliance broadcasts the WPL at no cost, because it did for the FIFA Men’s World Cup final yr, the sale of advert slots turns into much more necessary.

This being the primary WPL ever, the demographics of the audience are unclear. Not everyone seems to be shopping for the speculation of extra girls watching as a result of that is the Women’s Premier League. How Thawani places it’s an untested assertion with the percentages in opposition to it.

“The percentage of women watching IPL has still not increased significantly. About six years ago, when Sony was a broadcaster, the viewership of women was between 27 and 30 per cent. But we have to understand the creation. This is not standalone viewership. This women are watching with their family or male members. When you go to the stadium, you will see women, but (the majority) are there as part of a family activity,” Thawani mentioned.
“Even if there was a grain of reality that extra girls want to watch girls’s IPL, my reply is ‘no’, except the person of the home additionally needs to observe it. About 92 per cent of households in India have a Hee TV hai,” Thawani mentioned.

According to Thawani, IPL viewership information on telephones is ‘5 to seven minutes’, and most of it’s in transit. “People will say that ladies can all the time watch it on telephone. But nobody is utilizing it as the primary machine. If you’re sitting at residence then present me a viewer who has TV however prefers to observe IPL on telephone does.

Which advertisements will work?

Ad guru Prahlad Kakkar says it’s time to revisit the promoting marketing campaign of cigarette model Virginia Slims, launched within the late Nineteen Sixties geared toward girls. The tagline ‘You’ve come a great distance, child’ struck a chord.

“I would sell their (women cricketers) sheer grit to compete in a man’s world and prove themselves over many years. The line for them would be the Virginia Slims line. Any product that has come up can build on this line,” mentioned Kakkar.

Kakkar believes the ‘hammer print’ methodology of promoting masculinity will work in IPL however not in WPL.

“For men, it’s ‘is your six-pack better or my six-pack better’. For women, you’re looking at…subtle advertising on multiple levels. That is, sensitivity, compassion, humor and genuine courage. If advertisers are smart, they should keep these touch points in mind,” Kakkar mentioned.

Karnik mentioned the expansion of girls’s sports activities is a golden alternative for brand new manufacturers to return on board.

“When you’re constructing girls’s cricket, you’re additionally constructing a brand new class of advertisers who usually wouldn’t promote in males’s cricket, however could also be girls’s cricket in a barely completely different means. We can count on to see FMCG, healthcare, trend, magnificence and grooming and so forth profiting from girls’s cricket as this format can be anticipated to draw and interact feminine audiences.

According to Santosh N, Managing Partner, D&P Advisory, even small corporations can benefit from the chance to promote throughout cricket matches.

“In IPL, commercial slots go for Rs 17-20 lakh for 10 seconds, which could be very excessive for a few of these small corporations. But with WPL, advert slots might be less expensive.”

Were the groups too costly?

Karnik mentioned trying on the excel sheet wouldn’t reply whether or not the franchise rights went too far for the groups. The massive image is the valuation story.

Five groups have been offered for Rs 4,669 crore, with Adani Sportsline efficiently bidding for Ahmedabad (Rs 1,289 crore), which was the very best quantity.

“In 2008, Mumbai Indians paid around Rs 446 crore for the men’s team, which was unheard of in India at that time. Cut to 2022, Lucknow Super Giant was bought for Rs 7,090 crore. That’s what the ‘Value Unlocked’ Sport delivers over time. Therefore, valuation of a property is looked at over a period of 10 years for value creation and hence profit and loss may not always be the correct parameter to measure these investments,” mentioned Karnik.

As per the settlement, the income sharing mannequin between the BCCI and the franchises is 20:80 for the primary 5 years. The 5 franchises will get Rs 25-30 crore per season as a result of broadcast deal. However, they must pay the franchise price to the BCCI.

Thawani has raised one other pink flag, with the WPL window, scheduled for March, clashing with the reserve interval for the lads’s residence sequence. This yr Australia’s males’s workforce is touring India in February and March. Thawani mentioned, WPL ranking will probably be affected.

“The girls’s sport is attention-grabbing however like most girls’s sports activities, the athletic requirements are usually not the identical as the lads’s requirements. Tennis is the one one which has some affordable rankings in comparison with the lads’s, however solely within the Grand Slams. And it would not matter that What do you do, you’ll not discover a lady quick bowler who bowls at 90 mph.