Boundary all the way

For sponsors, it pays to be religious when it comes to cricket.

Statistics and cricket go hand in hand, unless you subscribe to one of the many weird Sidhuisms "" "Statistics are like a bikini "" what they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." So let's keep the Sidhuism aside and talk numbers. Nike's deal with Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) is in the range of Rs 200 crore.

BCCI is expecting a TV rights bid for Indian cricket team's matches in the range of Rs 600 crore. Add on a small matter of sponsorships, and a pack of corporates chasing the big bucks, the figure that you will get is colossal.

To give you an idea of the small matter of sponsorships, advertisers had spent about Rs 500 crore in over a month during the 2003 World Cup.

You name the brand and they are associated with the game (or are vying to be associated with it). Pepsi, LG, Samsung, Hero Honda, Videocon, DLF, Coke, TVS, Sahara, Hutch ... the list is endless. "It's not unexpected, is it?" asks a Delhi-based media planner.

"Whatever companies might say about their association with other sports being a break from the clutter, most of them know that cricket is bread and butter." Point noted. And why not? After all, we have millions glued to their TV sets watching cricketing action.

Where else would you get so many eyeballs at one point? Little wonder, companies go all guns blazing to get title sponsorships for any home series, and pay huge amounts of money. The returns are well worth the effort.

Pepsi spent a lot of money recently on their Blue Billion campaign during the Champions Trophy. Samsung has its Team India campaign. In fact, before each series involving the Indian cricket team, companies launch multimedia campaigns and spend crores of rupees on advertising and marketing. And with the 2007 cricket World Cup round the corner, the amount of money thrown in will swell big time.

Take for instance: Hutch, the phone service provider has been running a campaign for the last six months as a countdown to the World Cup. "It is the only game where the team's performance is secondary."

The team may be going through a bad patch (which happens more often than not!) and losing matches, but the money is never lost. Now, compare that to Sania Mirza, or Narain Karthikeyan "" one bad season in their sport and corporates start withdrawing individual as well as overall sponsorships.

Once a marketing head of a company had summed up the whole money-spinning monster that cricket is in the best way. He called the inventor of cricket the best marketing guru on the planet. "There is no other game where there is a possibility of showing TV ads every five minutes." Blame it all on the inventor!