let's first understand IPL. Indian Premier League (Indian Paisa League as its detractors are fond of calling it) is the brainchild of the erstwhile chairman of IPL Mr. Lalit Modi. But the idea of a Franchise driven TWENTY TWENTY cricket tournament was mooted by another equally brilliant marketer Subash Chandra. Christened ICL (Indian Cricket League) ICL was a great idea but ran into trouble with the BCCI. BCCI refused to grant official league status to ICL. This effectively spelled doom to the budding league.
But like all marketing innovations it as not the inventor who benefitted but the innovative Modi. Modi served up a delightful fare of cricket, cheer girls, bollywood, glamour, film stars, parties and an intoxicating fare of cricket all in the space of three hours. It was a marketer’s delight. Cricket is a very advertiser friendly game (in which other game can you get so much time for inaction where the watcher and be bombarded with so many commercials?).
Before the entry of IPL only thing that was going against cricket was the total time it was consuming. Test cricket takes 5 days, ODIs take one day. Twenty Twenty changed it all. The action only took three hours. Three hours as much time as one takes in watching a movie!.
Within three years IPL emerged as the fourth biggest sports brand in the world. It was valued at over 4.5 billion US dollars. Indians were salivating at the prospect of having the world’s hottest and richest sports brand but tragedy struck the brand.
The sleaze the shady underhand dealings, fixed franchisee bidding, online betting and match fixing came tumbling out of the closets. They have hurt IPL as a brand and have taken a heavy toll on its brand reliability. The resultant fall led to the resigning of Shashi Taroor and the suspension of its charismatic chairman Lalit Modi.
It is undeniable that there are lots of things wrong about IPL but nothing wrong about the brand IPL itself. Saying that brand IPL is sullied and asking for nationalization of IPL is like throwing the baby out along with the dirty bath water.
Suitable corrective actions have to taken to restore public confidence in brand IPL. IPL running should be made transparent and it should be run by a professionally appointed CEO. It can be aided by an expert panel already set up (Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Tiger Patuadi). The franchises should also be transparent about their dealings and functioning.
IPL should be made a part of Future Tours programme of the ICC and a window should be provided for IPL. Except players and their coaches no one else should be allowed into the dugout. All types of communication with outside world should be banned for the players when the match is on. All online betting and match fixing allegations should be investigated and if found to be true the operators should be severely penalized and thrown out.
Let us all work together and try to preserve IPL the world class brand that India has created. It is so hugely popular that 58 brands have developed and launched their new campaigns during the 3rd edition of IPL. So popular that players like Gilchrist, Symonds, Mathew Hayden have cut short their international careers to be a part of the IPL Jamboree. Long life IPL.
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