What drives fandom for the IPL teams? The presence of popular cricketers, brand equity of the team owner, followed by the team’s performance matter the most, says a Dentsu survey.
Those teams of the Indian Premier League (IPL) which work on the human factor and do well on the field are likely to bond best with their fans, says a survey carried out by Dentsu. The human factor could mean the presence of popular domestic and international players, involvement of celebrities and brand equity of the owner. Of the 1,130 people surveyed, Delhi Daredevils has the highest fan following of 20 per cent, followed by Kolkata Knight Riders with a score of 15 per cent. Kings XI Punjab is at the bottom of the heap.
What seems to have worked in favour of the Delhi team is the presence of explosive Indian batsmen Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir. In the first edition of IPL in 2008, the team even had film star Akshay Kumar as its brand ambassador. The fandom of Kolkata Knight Riders is driven by the presence of Sourav Ganguly and Shah Rukh Khan. Sachin Tendulkar is responsible for the large fan base of Mumbai Indians and Mahendra Singh Dhoni for that of Chennai Super Kings. (Click here for FACTORS DRIVING FANDOM)
What drives fans?
“Clearly, fandom is driven by fans’ involvement with the players and team owners. And then the team’s on-field performance matters. If a team can combine the two optimally, it will create a long and enduring bond,” says Dentsu India Chairman Sandeep Goyal. “Of the two, the human factor is completely controllable by the team management.” In a tournament where not countries but clubs take part, fandom is what all teams seek to build.
There are four factors, according to Dentsu, that drive fandom: Engagement (the team’s name, captain, colour and brand recall), involvement (sale of merchandise, visits to website, fan club membership and presence of spectators at matches), performance and the human factor (the presence of favourite Indian and international players, celebrity involvement and brand equity of owner). The biggest driver is the human factor, Dentsu has found in the survey, followed by performance, engagement and involvement.
The brand equity of the owner is the fan’s ability to identify the owner of the team and become a fan for that reason. “In the case of Kolkata Knight Riders, for instance, Khan is a big driver of fandom. In Kings XI Punjab’s case, Preity Zinta is correctly identified as the team owner but is not as powerful a driver as Khan. In the case of Rajasthan Royals, the lower recognition of the owner impacts overall fandom,” says Goyal.
Performance deepens the bond with fans. However, performance without involvement does not drive fandom. So, both Rajasthan Royals and Deccan Chargers don’t have a huge army of fans, though they came on top in the first and second editions respectively of IPL.
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Brand value
The survey has also found that for most teams, full brand recall is an issue that needs to be addressed. Worse, the recall of brands that have sponsored the various teams is not high. Royal Challengers Bangalore has the best recall because of its innovative branding strategy, the survey says. All the teams, it adds, need to improve their involvement with fans. The scores of all the eight teams on this parameter were found to be low. In the future, this could become a bigger driver of fandom than the human factor. The teams need to invest time, money and energy right through the year and not just when the IPL matches are played, Dentsu suggests.
The survey was done between March 1 and March 10 across 35 cities using the live database of www.indianfantasyleague.com which is a part of the Dentsu digital ecosystem. When the survey was being done, the hockey World Cup was being played in New Delhi. Hence, it is safe to assume that the respondents have a high affinity towards cricket. Eighty per cent of the respondents were men, which gives the survey a distinct male skew. The men and women included businessmen, professionals, CEOs, clerks, housewives, salesmen, students, traders and the unemployed. As much as 85 per cent were graduates or more, which is not a surprise because this was a net-based survey.