Indian and multinational advertisers are poised to find out this weekend if the Indian Premier League, the country’s lavish Twenty20 cricket tournament, is set to become the “Superbowl” of the subcontinent.

The first games for the second season of the IPL – a runaway success when it launched last year – will open on Saturday in South Africa after the organisers were forced to temporarily move it from India for security reasons.

“It’s likely to be tempered down compared with last year,” said Shiv Sethuraman, chief executive of TBWA India, an advertising agency. “Having said that, it’s clearly becoming a big event on the marketing calendar for all advertisers.”

Multinational advertisers including Vodafone, Honda (in India known as Hero Honda) and Citibank last year flocked to the IPL, which is based on the 20-over format of the game rather than the conventional Test offerings.

In a country that worships cricket and celebrities, the IPL seeks to combine it all. Every team has about four international players and several teams have Bollywood stars as owners or in-vestors, including Shahrukh Khan and Shilpa Shetty.

Advertisers during the IPL last year were rewarded with high TV ratings, prompting many this year to begin launching new products and holding other events around the tournament.

According to reports, the tournament, during the 58 matches of its inaugural season, was watched by 29 per cent of TV viewers, higher than the cumulative share for the top Hindi entertainment channels.

It also made the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the sport’s national organising body, rich: franchisees paid a total of $724m for their teams and the World Sports Group, a Singapore-based company, paid $1bn for the rights to broadcast it for 10 years.

WSG has signed the rights on to broadcaster Sony Entertainment Television, a unit of the global company.

But the dream run for the IPL and its boss Lalit Modi has come to an end.

The terrorist attacks on Mumbai last November were followed this year by an attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, Pakistan. The 2009 tournament, which runs from April 18 to May 24, also coincides with India’s national elections, leading authorities to warn that they could not provide security for the games.

The move to South Africa has raised fears the teams in particular will lose money from the loss of ground income from ticket sales. There is also concern the IPL will lose its fizz without the enthusiasm of the sell-out Indian crowds, although Mr Modi says tickets are selling well.

Harsha Bhogle, a cricket commentator and writer, said while the shift to South Africa could pose problems, it was a chance to create “opportunity out of adversity”.

“All of us are very excited about the idea of creating the first global Indian sports brand,” he said.
Source – ft.com