The cost of sponsorship

India’s cricketers will wear the Sahara name on their chests for another three years — but is the team still a good investment?

So the Sahara Group outbid telecom giant Bharti Airtel to retain the sponsorship rights of the Indian Cricket Team until the end of 2013. I am not altogether surprised that Sahara has retained its name emblazoned on the chests of each and every willing Indian cricketer, but what does surprise me is the astonishing rise in the price, given India’s woeful performances in ICC global tournaments since they won the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 in South Africa in October 2007.

That fairytale tournament, with India edging out Pakistan in a tense final in Johannesburg, seems part of a misty past when India’s cricketers stood tallest amongst the game’s great players.

M S Dhoni had been put in charge of a young team who played with no fear and with such pride in their performances. I will never forget Yuvraj Singh smashing England’s Stuart Broad for six glorious sixes out of the Kingsmead Ground in Durban. Halcyon days. “Glorious India”, the television advertisements rallied!

Record television audiences watched India lift the world’s first Twenty20 trophy. India’s cricketers, all of them identifiable in their light blue Sahara shirts, became sponsors’ icons and sponsors’ targets, and for the players, it meant unimaginable wealth through product endorsements.

But since those heady days on the South African Highveld, when India ruled the world, the recipe for supremacy has been spoilt. From London in 2009 to Barbados in 2010, India have underperformed with alarming results, not making the Super Eight stages in either ICC World Twenty20 tournament in the past two years.

Television audiences on ESPN, the ICC’s host broadcaster, plummeted at least 50 per cent when India limped along in the Caribbean, taking an early plane home to a wave of criticism, some of it coming from the team’s management itself in a direct broadside to the millionaire under-achievers.

Sufficient reasons, you would say, for a reduction in price for the privilege of putting your company’s name across the chest of India’s crestfallen players. Not a bit of it! From July 1st 2010 to December 31st 2013, Sahara will pay the BCCI a staggering Rs 3.34 crore for every Test, one-day international (ODI) and Twenty20 international during this period.

Under the existing contract, Sahara was paying the BCCI Rs 1.9 crore per Test Match, Rs 2.08 crore per ODI, and Rs 1.56 crore per Twenty20 international. The percentage rise in the sums of money involved suggests that no one has really looked at the way India has performed in the ICC events since 2007 — or maybe the person in charge of working out the figures at the BCCI is a financial maestro whose identity is top-secret. For the BCCI, it is a financial coup and they must be congratulated. For Sahara, how do they go to bed and sleep at night knowing that they have paid more for a product that is underperforming so spectacularly on the international stage?

I can only presume that several clauses have been written into this deal whereby certain requirements have to be met. For instance, the name ‘Sahara’ on a fit Indian cricketer looks rather good, but on an Indian cricketer who is patently overweight and out of shape, does the company want to see its name “S A H A R A” stretched out in a way not identifiable with its brand or its clientele?

Sponsorship has to be a two-way street for it to work properly. When Tiger Woods’s life imploded last November, just look at the big companies who said “Thanks Tiger, but no thanks anymore” when the world number one golfer did not suit their image after his transgressions off the golf course. Companies may well head back toward the beleaguered golfer, but his price will be reduced.

Sahara has obviously done its sums to go into a new sponsorship deal with the BCCI, but they must also be expecting a change of results. No big company wants to be associated with a loser, a team that loses too regularly on the international stage. No company wants an association with a team that has lost its shape, literally and metaphorically, and India’s cricketers owe it to Sahara to make sure that the shirt they wear fits better than it has done the past two years.

If Sahara believes that its finances are in shape to be able to up the ante for the Indian cricket team, then the players need to prove that they are also in shape to wear the shirt. That part of the deal needs to be worked out.

Alan Wilkins is a TV broadcaster for ESPN Star Sports. Inside Edge appears every alternate week