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

ndia’s newest multinational, with projected revenues of Rs 800 crore in just five weeks, is all set to take wing in Cape Town on Saturday. Welcome to Lalit Modi’s India Premier League, Stage II, the Great Redeemer in these tough times, if you ask the entertainment, advertising and tourism industry.

And, if you believe Peter Roebuck, the famous Australian cricket columnist, “everyone except Elvis has been slated to appear at the opening”. And, some think he has half-a-chance of turning up, he wrote in Brisbane Times.

Even before the first match, between Sachin Tendulkar’s Mumbai Indians and MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings, Multi Screen Media (MSM, previously Sony Entertainment TV), which plans to rake in close to Rs 400 crore, claims to have sold 85% of advertising space.
Source – economictimes.indiatimes.com

Bubbling with energy after victories in both build-up games in Pretoria, Delhi Daredevils had their first practice session.

They had their practice session at the University of Cape Grounds on Thursday ahead of the second season of the Indian Premier League.

“The boys are all eager to go and they are all looking fit,” manager T A Sekar said.

“Boys are in good shape”

“Most have played highly competitive matches for their national and state teams in the past few weeks and are so in good match shape,” said Sekar.

“The locals are excited about seeing the IPL teams and quite a few have been backing Delhi Daredevils,” he added.

Putting the team through their practice session was coach Greg Shipperd, who joined the team last week in Johannesburg.

“These guys are all pros and they are in good shape,” Shipperd said.

The Delhi side had earlier played two practice games against Titans and Lions at Pretoria and won both.

Players played a football match

The cricketers played a football match with explosive Australian David Warner being the noisiest and keeping everybody in good humour.

“The best guys in the business are here and Delhi has been a fun team,” Warner said.

Daredevils captain Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Dinesh Karthik and Amit Mishra will join the squad later on Thursday while South African AB de Villiers is still engaged in the ODI series against Australia.

Paul Collingwood, Owais Shah, Daniel Vettori, Dirk Nannes, Andrew McDonald, Glenn McGrath, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Farveez Maharoof were all present at the practice sessions.

The Indians who were present at the session included Ashish Nehra, Rajat Bhatia, Mithun Manhas, Manoj Tiwary, Pradeep Sanghwan, Aavishkar Salvi, Yo Mahesh, Tejaswhi Yadav, Umesh Yadav and Yogesh Nagar.
Source – espnstar.com

A South African businessman returned Rand 450,000 to Kings XI Punjab on recovering it in one of the hotel rooms.

In a good samaritan act, He returned the amount he recovered in one of the hotel rooms the IPL team occupied.

According to a report in ‘The Times’, Stephen Blewett, the chief of Altech Autopage Cellular, found a bundle of Rand 4,50,000 (nearly Rs 2.5 million) cash in his hotel room which later turned out to be Kings XI Punjab’s.

Blewett discovered the money in Rand 100 notes in his hotel room’s safe on Tuesday night after which he reported the matter to the hotel authorities.

It later emerged that Kings XI had left the money, which was their allowances for food, drinks and other expenses, in that room as they had been using it for team meetings ahead of their IPL campaign.

“It is not common for us to carry that amount of money but we have a lot of costs and the money was not yet distributed to the players,” the team’s liaison officer Arvinder Singh.
Source – espnstar.com

Following Coach Buchanan theory of multiple captains, Kolkata Knight Riders has appointed New Zealand wicketkeeper Brendon McCullum as the new captain for IPL season 2.

The team is scheduled to play its first match for the series on April 19 against Deccan Chargers, in which McCullum will lead the team.

It is worth mentioning here that a war of words was escalated between John Buchanan and Sourav Ganguly escalated with Buchanan, the Kolkata Knight Riders’ coach, saying that he had already discussed with Sourav Ganguly the controversial theory of multiple captains for the team before making the announcement in a press conference.

However, Ganguly had denied any knowledge of this development, but Buchanan insisted that the two had had discussions on the issue during the IPL’s first season.

Buchanan is expected to announce more names who will lead the team during IPL 2 as per the theory of multiple captains.
Source – samaylive.com