Jinx Marketing

Don't let the image of Alan Shearer scare you. This video is actually about a campaign that some people ran for Swedish football club AIK, in which they went through an elaborate exercise of jinxing their fierce and less-loved opponents IFK Göteborg’s city with ill-luck charms (black cats, broken mirrors...the works). Watch the video to get details about the outcome.

Jinx Göteborg from Awkward on Vimeo.

What is interesting to know is that someone actually thinks that this was a great marketing campaign and the whole effort is being spoken off with fulsome praise and packaged as marketing nous rather than tons of fun and an accompanying laugh track. On the other hand, reports of Black Magic used by African teams in football are usually met with curiosity or on at least one occasion - arrest.

Having said that, the club (or whoever was behind the orgainzation of the jinx) is entitled to take credit for this innovative idea in the space of Fan Connect endeavors. The execution was also well handled, with fans being a part of the process in selecting and donating the objects. Could not find reports on how the exercise impacted ticket sales, viewership, merchandise sales etc. but in the very least there seemed to be some excitement.

Will we perhaps see IPL teams go beyond the ordinary in Fan Connect exercises?

Wanted - A 177.38 cm Footballer

Because that's exactly how tall an average Barcelona player is. That and other such fun stuff has been found by The Professional Football Players Observatory in a demographic study for 2011. Some results of this study have been listed and analyzed in this good read in The Guardian.

Only for your comfort, am listing down below some highlights:

• The average height of a footballer in Europe is 181.96cm, up 0.28cm on 2008 with the Premier League the seventh tallest. Barcelona have the shortest side in all of European Football.
• There is an overwhelming tendency for the 11 most picked players in a squad to be shorter than their team-mates
• Manchester United is the most stable club, with players staying an average of 5.71 years
• In 24 of the 36 leagues studied players stayed longer at the four highest ranked clubs than the other sides in the league.
• Only Cypriot clubs have a higher percentage (72.3%) of expatriate players than English clubs (58.4%)

Whether this data will be used by Managers to select players that are ideal or one of Roman or the Arabs will just ask their scientists to use this information to create a footy-monster with ideal demographic characteristics are yet to be seen. But these things are sure fun to know.

The Right to Six Balls An Over

If you have successfully survived Ten Cricket's broadcast of the South Africa - India series and have been left more familiar with Sangeetha than Shrisanth, then you may want to get into this discussion on Cricinfo. Trying to find out who exactly benefits from Ads popping up everywhere including the bowler's behind as he runs to deliver the irrelevant piece of action before the next commercial, Harsha Bhogle has assembled an impressive panel:

• Sambit Bal: Editor Cricinfo (representing the view of the fan)
• Peter Hutton: ex Ten Sports
• Raghu Menon: I&B Ministry
• Hiren Pandit: Group M, Media Planning
• Rajiv Shukla: BCCI and MOP

Bhogle, regains his touch off-air and magically illustrates that a panel discussion can actually be enlightening, something that may not go down too well with the good people at the News Channels. Though even Bhogale cannot get Rajiv Shukla to add any value other than entertainment. To hear Shukla hilariously emphasize that BCCI is viewer-friendly as it has ensured that they get to watch all six balls of an over (repeated a thousand times to drill into your head, BCCI's bounty), you will have to listen through till almost the end of this longish feature, but if you have the time and inclination, then this will be worth it.



 

Book Review: The Elusive Fan, Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Markeplace

The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace by Irving Rein, Philip Kotler, Ben Shields

Is Sports Management Theory really different from simple run-of-the-mill Management Theory? Do the underlying principles for attracting and then retaining consumers differ in the world of sports versus soaps? Is cultivating and then reinventing a sports brand in need of unique frameworks and checklists as if not enough have made their way into presentations and reports through standard MBA marketing courses?

In a few lines towards the end of “The Elusive Fan - Reinventing Sports In A Crowded Marketplace”, the authors neatly present the case for the relevance of their book and why the Sports Industry as a whole is looking at some unique issues and hence needs little twists in its thinking caps that decision makers in other industries do not face. “...segmentation in sports often presents a dilemma that other industries do not typically face. Inherent in many sports brands is the democratic ideal that everyone should be able to participate, go to the games, and share in the home team’s fortunes and failures. The problem is that, while it is essential to make a profit, much of a sports brand’s ability to function in the community is based on the goodwill and civic obligations of the sport.” The implication of such a reality as they state is that “Sports brands must not only segment and target desirable audiences but they must be willing to manage unprofitable relationships.”

Having said that, there is no denying the significant areas of overlap in managing a sports business as compared to any other business. Hence, any textbook with a focus on the Sports Industry would also be applicable in large doses for any executive, with the added advantage of having ‘you-can’t-put-me-down’ interest levels for the reader, especially if you are one of those who get turned on by the talks of balls and high on visualisations of grass fields. Of course, if the book is well-written and flows easily, a text book may end up feeling like a thriller with new secrets revealed as each page is flipped.

Summary

The following summary is taken from the website for the book: http://www.theelusivefan.com/about.html

The Elusive Fan is a groundbreaking guide to engaging and retaining today’s fragmented, ever-shifting, and demanding sports fans.

The sports industry is booming like never before. At all levels, from professional and high school to college and club, revenues are reaching previously unimaginable heights. Sports are now a multi-billion dollar global business that is on the cutting-edge of entertainment, new media technology, and communication and marketing synergies. And the industry will only continue to grow by leaps and bounds into the foreseeable future.

The bad news: Competing for sports fans has never been more intense and uncertain.

World-renowned communication expert Irving Rein, international marketing guru Philip Kotler, and communication specialist Ben Shields explore the many challenges facing sports today and offer their expert analysis of the current and emerging market trends that are making it so difficult to capture the hearts and minds of today’s sports fans. Using a wide mix of case studies from many of today’s most successful sports leagues, teams, stars, and facilities, they show how you can:

• Transform sports products into strong brands that transcend winning and losing
• Integrate new technologies to engage fans and maximize revenue
• Build star-powered attractions to drive sports brands
• Develop enduring connections with fan markets
• Anticipate and quickly respond to the competitive and cultural trends that affect the sports marketplace
• Reconnect fans through a number of innovative strategies

Today’s sports fan operates in a world saturated with choices. Traditional sports like baseball, football and basketball, must now vie for fans’ attention (and dollars) with emerging challengers such as NASCAR, snowboarding, lacrosse, poker…even paintball. For the first time in history, the sports industry has to reexamine fundamental questions about its true markets, product distribution, and how to handle inevitable crises. The old business formulas, developed in an age of just three television networks and creaky stadiums with backless, uncomfortable seats, no longer apply.

Authors Rein, Kotler, and Shields deliver an innovative new business model centered squarely on fan satisfaction and retention. They give you the tools for successfully transforming your sports product into an enduring brand, immune to the vagaries of winning and losing—flexible enterprises that quickly adapt to changing market conditions and consistently deliver a unique and satisfying sports experience.

Whether you are a decision maker for a sports team or league on the professional, college, or high school level, a marketer, advertiser, or sponsor of a sports product, an athlete looking to break out into new markets, a business leader searching for clues to emerging trends, or a fan who is interested in the past, present, and potential future of the sports business, this book is a must-read.

Combining expert analysis with field-tested strategies for winning hearts and minds, The Elusive Fan is your guide to surviving and thriving in today’s fragmented, ever-widening world of sports.

What’s good about the book?

• Amidst situational analysis and problem solving frameworks and checklists, you are never far away from a real-life case illustration. A sports story popping up every few lines holds interest easily and makes the book easy, fun and fast to read.
• While practising managers rarely define strategy while consulting their dusty textbooks from B-School, good books on management theory usually have the art of neatly summing up actual management behavior in a structured framework. The Elusive Fan seems developed around how sports brands and brand managers behave in circumstances and not as a lecture on how they should behave.
• The breadth of sports covered through case studies and examples is impressive. While most references are to American sports, understandably and fairly so, there is enough to go around from the rest of the world to make the book globally relevant. Beckham is there and so is Benefica, Sania and Sharapova illustrate points effectively and cricket and its emergence as a credible player in world sports is acknowledged.
• With little known tales of famous people and quirky stories about little known people, the book arms its reader with great material to be used in water-cooler discussions, party banter or heated sports debates. For example the story of Gorgeous George, the pro wrestler who first positioned himself as quirky, unconventional and with heavy undertones of sexuality in his brand, much before Beckham took his first steps. Or how the 1910 boxing showdown between the white Jim Jeffries and the black Jack Johnson led to racial tensions and caused riots all over America. There are tons of them inside and the reader may come out on the other side of the book appearing very knowledgeable indeed.

What’s not so good about the book?

• The authors emphatically make the point that the fan connection cannot be dependent upon performance on the field and poor on-field performance should not necessarily lead to a drop in fan interest. They also provide interesting alternative strategies for building sports brands (the branded facility, the branded management etc.). However, while theoretically they make a valid point about attempting to keep the popularity of a sports brand immune from on-field performance, they are rarely able to convince us that this has been achieved in practice with good effect. In fact they acknowledge ‘underperformance’ as one of the major factors that leads to the decline of a sports brand and leave one a little unconvinced by their argument that lowering fan expectation is perhaps a good way to avoid letting the sports brand underperform.
• Sometimes the reader may struggle a bit in being convinced that a case study or a real-life illustration successfully backs the point being made. This is a little harsh as it does not happen too frequently but it is true that you may at times be left with a feeling that a better story could have done the job better. For example, the case of the Daytona International Speedway as a branded facility that successfully transformed its brand when faced with competition, leaves you unconvinced that a Fan Zone with higher priced tickets was the answer to all the challenges that the venue faced that the authors themselves have listed down.
• One secondary yet important failing of the book may be that it fails to leave its readers with sports specific jargon and terminology. For good or bad, jargon is an important part of an executive’s existence in this Dilbert world and terms like Brand Connectors or Brand Transformation are hardly going to be enough returns for those who have maintained their habit of reading only to impress people in conference rooms.

Who is the book for?

What’s fascinating about a subject like sports is that one need not be associated with the industry to enjoy a well written book on sports. And The Elusive Fan may successfully qualify as a book that readers across segments would enjoy.

• Sports Industry Executives - Will find this very handy in not just enhancing their knowledge but also as a source of reference when faced with specific challenges. Turning to the right page may be a catalyst towards finding the right approach to tackling the problem.
• Marketing and Strategy Managers - Will find it a good read and will help them brush up their basics
• Management Students - Of sports management programs will definitely love it. However, it may lie somewhere in the middle for them. If they have already done brand management courses, a lot of the concepts will seem repeated. On the other hand this book should not be the only instruction received in the overall subject of brand management.
• Sports Enthusiasts - Should enjoy it as the theory never gets overbearing and most of the book reads like a collection of sports stories.

Is it relevant for Indian Sports?

If we look at the maturity of sports as an industry in India, then in spite of IPL and its global renown, it would not be difficult to acknowledge that India has a long way to go. So how relevant can a book that largely takes a world view of the problems that are faced by sports in the USA be for India?

The answer is that it is completely and truly relevant. Where else are sports fans as elusive as they are here? In spite of the love for cricket, we only generate crowds for international games and now the IPL while almost all domestic cricket passes by unwatched and unnoticed. Let’s not even get started with other sports.

The challenge is to analyze our situation correctly and pick up the right tools to address our problems. For example, is the first step required in transforming some of our sports properties correct benchmarking? I have attended some sports events locally and it is clear that the organizers aspire for nothing more than a game taking place. There is rarely thought or desire to attract any kind of an audience for the event. Maybe, as a first step some of these organizers have to dream of filling in the stands and have a vision of how they want their event to be consumed. Maybe they need to tell themselves that they want to make the state Hockey Super Division league at least 30% as popular as the I-League and then the rest would follow.

India suffers from the Elusive Player syndrome as much as it suffers from elusive fans and if our sports are to be fixed, challenges will have to be addressed simultaneously on many fronts. Each component of the industry has to identify its own targets, problems and solutions to overcoming the problems. A reading of The Elusive Fan may just help turn some thoughts in the right direction.
 

The Legacy of 3 For and 13 Against

It’s time to pop open the champagne then, eh? After all we conceded just thirteen goals throughout our inspiring Asia Cup campaign where we could have expected to notch up that number in the ‘Goals Against’ column in our opener against the Socceroos. And to add to the party we scored three of our own - yes, that’s three more than what many of us will manage against these opposition playing FIFA games on XBoxes and PlayStations representing India, if and when they ever get down to putting our national team on the hallowed game.

Cutting out the sarcasm, our team’s appearance at one of football’s least high-profile major tournaments did give us a few moments to cherish. To see Climax on the same field as Cahill and saying the names Pradeep and Park Ji Sung in the same sentence were goose bump triggers in themselves, that there were moments when our boys held their own against these relative nabobs of footy was as close to stimulating as you could possibly get while seeing your national team being laundered on international television.

Subrata Paul’s heroic saves, zillion goal line clearances, Chhetri’s delightful touches, the overall performance against Bahrain where we actually dominated for spells, Bhutia’s late entry in the final game against Korea and how it lifted a tired team will, all keep coming back to memory as vividly as a replay. And of course the greatest moment of them all, the stunning strike from Renedy against Bahrain that was unfortunately not called as a goal, though the error was rectified by Chhetri knocking the rebound in for India’s second of the match. In the stands there were roaring Indian fans who provided some degree of credibility to the tournament - India v Bahrain had 11,000 people in a stadium that seats 13,000, Australia v Korea a game with the two biggest teams in the continent had about half that many people.

Of course, for every silver lining, there is a heaven full of grey clouds. Our skill and technique rarely came into the picture, so far behind were we on speed, strength and stamina. Not that athleticism or the lack of it came across as our only short coming. Our defence was at times amusing and at other moments hilarious. Paul, for all his shot stopping abilities made too many errors while collecting crosses and in his positioning. The midfield failed to hold the ball for longer than nano-seconds and though the strikers didn’t disgrace themselves, for most of the tournament, they saw as much as the action as the saas-bahu audience back in their homeland.

It’s not surprising then, that India’s presence at the game has been met with lots of patronizing comments and little doses of ridicule. Remember, India did not make it to the tournament through a grinding qualifying process, but by winning a tournament of minnows called the AFC Challenge Cup in 2008, where surprisingly even countries like Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and North Korea (the giants of that stage) did not send in their first teams. While ESPNStar’s Jesse Fink plainly stated that ‘India don’t belong at the Asia Cup’, the splendid blog theballisround neatly summed up how far behind India seem to be by comparing our crowd’s excitement at stringing two passes together to Japanese and Korean fans from twenty years ago. The question though is, are we beginning to look like we will be there twenty years from now?

There are positive signs for Indian football which could make indeed turn the corner for us and at least make us competitive at the Asian level in that time. The IMG Reliance deal with AIFF bodes well. Fundamental changes that this partnership brings about in Indian football could make the difference. What is unlikely is that the legacy of three not-as-bad-as-expected drubbings will cause a change. Or future easy passes to the Asia Cup.

We know now that FIFA and hence, the AFC are making desperate attempts to woo India just like any money-minded multinational. Why else would blabbering Blatter raise the spector of a World Cup hosted by India in 2026? Yet, the approach that says making us whipping boys will lead to surge in domestic popularity for our team and the game seems misguided.

Would it not be better for example, to put us through the proper qualifying rigors and then hold a tier-two tournament which could have teams that finished 17-32 in the qualifiers competing for a trophy. India are about 25th in Asia and it may be more fun seeing where we stand against Thailand and Malaysia rather than Australia and South Korea. Our results will be better and with India’s participation, the tournament can be assured of about as much commercial success as the Asia Cup. The AFC itself, runs second tier championships at the club level and this seems to be a natural extension of the idea.

It was expensive preparing our team for these three matches. Bob Houghton, in an approach unique in International football, plucked our best players from their clubs to keep them together for a long time in the build up to this tournament. He was forced to do so as our clubs have disgraceful training facilities and our players regress when they train with their clubs. The return for the investment made by the AIFF and sponsors will have to be much more tangible than a handful of fans being left with flashes of success amidst hours of depression. So while it was nice being at the Asia Cup, maybe we should leave that alone for now and take some baby steps where they need to be taken. How about some I-League on TV for starters?

Case Study: KKR's PR blunder of Dada Proportions

It's not the fact that they did not pick Dada that is the problem, it's the manner of their doing it.

A sports franchise has a responsibility to win and choosing not to invest in a 38 year old who does not come cheap, has not been active and involved at the highest level for some time now, who is reportedly a tough character to manage in the dressing room and who has been part (and part-time leader) of an under performing squad for three seasons, is a justifiable decision in terms of on-field strategy for even those who face the media like Ravindra Jadeja faces bouncers.

Yet, a sports franchise also has a responsibility towards its fans and never more than towards its core set of supporters - in this case the residents of Kolkata, and hence without the need of any detailed research - the vast majority of Bengalis. In the manner of their handling of the whole 'Sourav Ganguly's day out at the auctions' saga, the KKR management have risked antagonizing their core base of fans which could depending on the turn of events have varying degrees of negative impact.

Protagonists

Sourav Ganguly is a legendary Indian cricketer who not only established himself as a leading batsman of the game, but as captain heralded an era of success for the Indian cricket team. Affectionately known as 'Dada', a Bengali term of endearment meaning an elder brother, Ganguly is also a significant cultural icon in West Bengal, where he provided the local population with a hero in the cricketing world, an icon in a field where the Bengalis lacked an illustrious representative in their portfolio of legends (Satyajit Ray in cinema, Sushmita Sen in beauty and glamor, Rabindranath Tagore in Literature and so on). In spite of his retirement from international cricket in 2008, Ganguly has remained a favorite son-of-the-soil in his native state, not least through his status as an icon player in the first IPL squad of the Kolkata Knight Riders.

The IPL or the Indian Premier League is a professional cricket league contested in the T20 format. It was established in the year 2008 and is supervised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The league consists of Indian city-based franchises, which are formed through a competitive bidding process, after the BCCI has nominated the cities for which franchise rights are on offer. The 2011 version of the IPL will be contested by ten franchises. The IPL has quickly established itself has a leading event in world sports through a combination of a well-marketed successful product, association with celebrities and glamor and the ‘money’ factor involved with all aspects of the league which makes it one of the biggest commercial sports entities in the world today. The IPL has been valued in excess of 4 billion USD and has been rated as the second highest paid league, based on first team salaries on a pro-rata basis by the Annual Review of Global Sports Salaries. In recent times, the IPL has also been in the news for various controversies amidst accusations of financial mismanagement, corruption and nepotism.

The IPL Player Auction is a specific off-field event, where players contracted to the IPL are purchased by franchisees through a competitive bidding process. The organizing body sets a base price for each player and the franchisees bid over and above the base price for each player with the player going to the team who bids to pay him the highest. The player auction is governed by a salary cap as well as restrictions on the composition of teams that need to include a specified number of Indian players - capped as well as uncapped. The players are signed on a three year contract, though auctions were held in the second and third years of the IPL as well to auction off the newly contracted players. A number of players remain unsold through the auction process and hence do not get a chance to take part in the IPL.

Kolkata Knight Riders is one of the eight original IPL franchises established in 2008. It is co-owned by bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment and Jai Mehta, who is the husband of yesteryear bollywood leading lady Juhi Chawla. In the first three seasons of the IPL, they have been the least successful of all teams, being the only franchise never to have made it to the semi finals. The team however is consistently in the news owing to its high-profile owner as well as a penchant for controversy like replacing Sourav Ganguly as captain at the eleventh hour before the second season of IPL kicked off.

Turn of Events

Going into the IPL Player Auction for the fourth season, each franchise had been given the option of retaining upto four players from it’s existing squad at a certain associated cost for each player. When Kolkata Knight Riders did not make use of this option to retain their best loved star, there was an indication of things to come.

Sourav Ganguly was available at the player auction at the highest base price of 400,000 USD. It was reported that Ganguly had initially been marked to be auctioned off from a base price of 200,000 USD but had it increased to the higher amount on request, a facility that is available to players.

The auction was a live televised affair and was followed keenly by the media and all of India. When Ganguly’s name came up for auction, none of the teams including the Kolkata Knight Riders showed any interest. The auction was a two-day affair with franchisees getting a second opportunity to buy players who were unsold in the first round. However, none of the franchises showed any interest in the India legend. Kolkata Knight Riders spent close to USD 8 Million on twelve players, including sums of USD 400,000 or more on six of these players. The details of the auction results can be seen here.

The Reaction

There has been widespread hue and cry over the decision by all franchisees to strategically opt for not picking up a former India legend. No where has there been more indignation than Kolkata and amongst the supporters of the Kolkata Knight Riders.

• Fans have expressed their unhappiness by carrying out protest marches in Kolkata, raising the slogan “No Sourav, No Cricket”.
• Effigies of Shah Rukh Khan, the team owner have been burnt
• Times of India, the leading English language newspaper has added to the hyperbole by terming the day of the auction as a “Black Sunday” for Sourav Ganguly and his fans
• Past cricketers like Arun Lal former India batsman from Bengal, have commented that factors other than cricket were in play contributing to Sourav’s omission
• Fans have expressed their displeasure on the Internet through blogs as well as on social networking sites with some even calling for fans in Kolkata to boycott the team and refrain from going to the stadium when the IPL begins in April. Chain SMS campaigns are also in full vogue.
• The snubbing of Dada is being widely seen as a ‘humiliation’ and the term is being used frequently in the media and on panel discussions on news channels.

Perhaps the extent of disconnect with the fans can be summarized by comments made by fans as reported in the newspapers. Suhel Bannerjee, a fan who has started a “Boycott Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL 4” page on Facebook is reported to have said, "I have switched my allegiance to the Mumbai Indians. Being a Kolkata boy, I used to connect with KKR primarily because of Dada. After what they have done to him, I hate KKR".



Damage Control

Faced with the intense reaction from its core fan base as well as the ongoing interest of the media in the issue, Shah Rukh Khan spoke with journalists and initiated the damage control exercise which has been covered significantly by the electronic as well as the print media.

The strategy has been to placate fans through:

• Publicly acknowledging Sourav’s status in Kolkata and stating repeatedly that Sourav Ganguly enjoys a great relationship with KKR as well as Shah Rukh Khan
• Publicly offering Sourav Ganguly a role in the KKR setup, possibly as a mentor. A similar arrangement has been reached between the Royal Challengers Bangalore, another IPL franchise and Anil Kumble, legendary spinner from Bangalore.

A similar statement has been provided by Venky Mysore, the CEO of the franchise.

Sourav Ganguly has not so far made any comments to the media regarding the perceived ‘humiliation’ of not being picked at the auction as well as the offer for the role of a mentor for the KKR team.

The story is expected to progress when Shah Rukh makes the promised phone call to Sourav Ganguly on his return to India and when Ganguly makes his position on the mentor role clear. Meanwhile, speculation is rife that Ganguly himself is not too interested in the role, especially since it has been offered after the drama of the auctions.

Impact

The short term impact has been in the form of open demonstrations, burning of effigies and the use of Internet and mobile platforms by fans of Sourav Ganguly to express their displeasure. There have been calls to boycott KKR in the next edition of the IPL as well as massive reaction in Kolkata against Shah Rukh Khan, who as the best known representative of the team management is facing the flak for the decision.

It remains to be seen whether the mood of the fan base will continue to be hostile when the fourth edition of the IPL kicks off in April. In the worst scenario for the franchise and its owners, the negative reaction now may translate into lower gate receipts, lower merchandise sale and even have an impact on the popularity of Shah Rukh Khan movies in Kolkata.

However, a few factors may mitigate the real negative impact.

• Time: There is a three month time lag between the player auctions and the start of the IPL. The media frenzy as well as the fan dissatisfaction may be significantly reduced in this time and with the expected positive hype that will be generated around the event before the IPL starts, may lead to a lot of people softening their stance and going out to support the Kolkata Knight Riders even without their favorite player.
• Ganguly’s reaction: What Sourav Ganguly himself does and his actions leading up to the IPL may also have a bearing on the real commercial impact of the current controversy. If he accepts the role of a mentor and makes conciliatory statements between now and the IPL, then his fans too will forgive the franchise management far more easily. However, if he distances himself from the franchise and worse remains active in the media with complaints of injustice then it could add fuel to the simmering fire.
• On-field performance: If the team that has been selected by the franchise starts on a winning note and turns in consistent good performances, it is likely to have a huge impact in getting the fans back to the stadium. However, this remains a double-edged sword as continued failure on the field will only lead to the fans claiming that the absence of Dada has contributed to plight of the team.
• Unrelated factors: Certain factors not directly related to the controversy may also come into play. For example a good run by India at the World Cup that precedes the IPL will create a very positive buzz about the sport and will benefit the KKR along with all the other franchises. On the other hand unrelated scandals associated with any of the protagonists may swing fan opinion one way or the other.

Analyzing the Mistakes and What Could Have Been Done

There have been some basic and critical mistakes made by many parties associated with this controversy.

The least amount of fingers should however, be pointed at the KKR staff responsible for determining the composition of the team as well as selecting the players. While there are enough noises being made about the fact the even at age 38, Sourav Ganguly is fit to play a significant role for the team over the next three seasons, the team management is completely entitled to having a different point of view and opting for a set of players that they trust will help them meet their objectives. The only question that remains is whether the team management had unequivocally communicated their plans of not bidding for Sourav Ganguly to the other departments of the franchise. Given the fact that IPL franchises are as yet not large corporate behemoths with complex organizational structures and their refusal to retain Ganguly before the auctions, it is highly unlikely that such a major communication gap would have existed.

It is the people responsible for managing the public relations of the franchise that seem to be most at fault. To begin with, as soon as they were aware of the management’s decision not to include Sourav Ganguly in the lineup, they should have anticipated the impact that it would have on their core fan base and planned accordingly. The ideal way to handle this would be to replicate the manner in which Anil Kumble’s role as mentor for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) was finalized. The franchise completed the process before the auctions allowing Kumble to withdraw his participation from the auction. This does not imply that Kumble’s omission would have caused a similar furore in Bangalore or that no other franchise would have picked him, yet it shows that the entire RCB team was aware that Kumble was not needed as a player anymore and they prevented any resulting controversy by communicating with him and convincing him to be associated with them before the event.

The lack of communication, or at least the lack of correct communication between KKR and Ganguly is evident. For starters, the mentor role should have been offered in private and in advance to Ganguly while informing him that they did not plan to select him. Assuming this had indeed been done and Ganguly had refused the offer, the onus was on KKR to handle this information in a manner that was not going to damage their reputation.

Some of the key actions by the KKR management that could have averted this controversy are:

• Communicate with Sourav Ganguly about their decision to not select him and offer him a mentor role much before the player auction
• Deploy their best resources to convince Ganguly to take up the offer as his continued association and support for the team is critical in maintaining the connection with the core fan base
• In case, Ganguly refused the offer, then KKR should have gone public with the facts before the auction letting people know of their intent while thanking Ganguly for his services and wishing him the best in his association with some other franchise. Involving Ganguly in this exercise would have further assuaged his fans that all that is happening is with Ganguly’s consent and the franchise is not back-stabbing him

However not all the blame can be laid on the shoulders of the franchise. Sourav Ganguly himself (or his representatives) should have been completely informed on interest levels from not just KKR but all other franchises before making himself available for the auction. The fact that not even a single bid was received from any franchise clearly indicates that Sourav’s name was kept in the auction list either on the basis of little or no information or perhaps even some false information. This is even more surprising given that he had himself raised his price tag from USD 200,000 to USD 400,000 for the auction. For someone to have had as long a career in the game, the people behind the decision to keep Sourav in the fray should have known exactly what they were getting into, and if there were any expectations that no bids would be received, indications regarding the same should have been made before the event, thereby mitigating the impression, that Ganguly had been ‘humiliated’ at the auction.

Interesting Factors at Play

This controversy is interesting to observe from a sports industry observer’s point of view as it brings into play a number of factors:

• Cultural Icon: The importance of the Cultural Icon is highlighted here as even though the team management does not think that Sourav meets their requirements as a player, it is irrelevant to their core fan base who still believe in their icon.
• Star versus Star: In many ways this has become a clash between two hugely popular stars who had all the potential to use the synergies of their relationship to enhance each others reputations, but have through the mismanagement of the situation turned it into what is being perceived as a feud. It remains to be seen what the impact will be on Shah Rukh Khan’s films in the Kolkata market, where clearly Sourav is a bigger icon than even the oft-termed King of Bollywood.
• New Media Emergence: That social networks and SMS are an established media in India is well known (example ‘The Pink Chaddi Campaign’ that was conducted through Facebook to protest against the views of Pramod Mutalik of Sri Ram Sene), but this is one of the first occasions where the Internet has played a valuable role in keeping a controversy alive in the field of sports. Other forms of media have observed the ire of the Bengalis on the Internet and taken those inputs to keep the controversy alive on all channels.
• Professionalism still to be ingrained in IPL franchises: Sports franchises are a very new phenomenon in India and the controversy illustrates that the franchisees lack well organized structures and completely professional set ups. A fully and efficiently functioning organization would have prevented this controversy from taking place. Alternatively, the structure is in place and it may just be an issue of people not doing their jobs properly.
• IPL Auction is an established off-field event: The IPL auction has established itself as an extension of the IPL itself and even though it is not a sports event in itself, it is none the less one of the events in the calendar that generates the most interest, perhaps even more so in India than many other sports. Coverage of India’s participation in the Asia Cup in Football after twenty-fiver years and the Chennai Open ATP tennis tournament paled in comparison to the IPL Player auction thereby illustrating that sports properties need not restrict themselves to the playing arena to strengthen their brand.

Endnote

At the time of writing this, the controversy has not completely died down. It will be interesting to observe the next moves of Sourav Ganguly, KKR as well as their fans. It will not be surprising to see a post-script to this case study with much more material to analyze. It will also be intersting to observe the actual impact on the franchise once the IPL starts, though lack of transparency regarding revenue generation etc. may not immediately allow us to draw specific conclusions.