Managing Director, Mindshare

The purists looked the other way when Krish Srikkanth padded up. They don’t know where to hide now. The era of Krish Srikkanth and Mark Greatbatch has a new name—Twenty20.

In today’s era of instant entertainment, even One Day International (ODI) cricket seems too long and not as action-packed as football. When the gentleman’s game was no longer entertaining, ECB started T20 as a club championship in 2003 to get interest back into cricket. In mid-2004, the first T20 game held at Lords had an attendance of 26,000—the highest ever for a club cricket game since 1953.

The rest of the cricket playing nations took this format’s appeal to revive domestic cricket. The first international T20 game was played between Australia and New Zealand in Auckland in early 2005. The ICC adopted this format to enhance cricket’s appeal and announced the first T20 World Cup.

India was among the last cricket playing nations to accept the T20 format. Not surprising, since India contributes around 60% of the global cricket economy of around Rs 3,500 crore annually. It was felt that T20 could reduce the game’s earning potential. But Team India’s win in the first T20 World Cup thrust this form of the game to the forefront of consumer interest, leaving little choice but to fast-track the plans.

Like in most sports, broadcasting revenues drive the cricket economy. Revenues from advertising and access add to it. Cricket is the most advertiser-friendly reality television programme. With nearly 5,000 seconds of advertising and 100 days of play in a year, it is every content owner’s dream. But T20 changed the equations. With limited advertising time to sell and more interesting fare than the ODI, T20 could attract more viewers but restrict the big-bucks broadcast bids because of limited inventory to sell.

At that time, along came the BCCI with its Indian Premier League (IPL), modeled on the lines of Premiership football. IPL, scheduled to kick off this summer, is based on domestic teams under franchise ownership basis, with the best of international and Indian talent within the clubs getting a fair share of broadcast revenues as committed income. This can drive domestic cricket while making for a sound business proposition.

With the value of Indian domestic cricket estimated at less than 5% of the game’s total value, a domestic T20 league could be the dream product of the product innovator. If planned well, it could build a new stream of revenues without compromising on the existing ones.

With the economy growing at around 9% and advertisement expenditure at nearly

Riding high: Leagues with T20 format could drive domestic cricket

20%, there are a lot of new advertisers in the market. There are an estimated 14,000 brands advertised on TV today (that’s only 15% of all advertised brands in India), and the number is growing. The number of brand advertisements on cricket has more than doubled in the last two years—from 1,388 in 2004 to 2,966 in 2006. Everyone wants a share of the action. And all of it is happening only within the broadcast space.

League cricket has the potential to open this up and ride high on many fronts, such as expanding the base of advertisers, leveraging the brands better, and tap male audiences (in 2003-04, three out of the top 10 advertised brands targeted males; in 2006-07, it was six.)

The day may not be far when Indian domestic cricket leagues will be as sought after across the world as the Premiership is today. The pitch is good and the weather looks fine, it’s game on this summer.