If cricket is the most popular sport in India, the Indian Premier League (IPL) is arguably the most popular version of the game.
Yet, when Argentine football captain Lionel Messi took the field on Friday, match organisers would have realised up to Rs 8 crore in ticket sales, compared with an average Rs 2.5 crore that the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) raked in, in a game in Kolkata.
"Keeping our estimates on the conservative side, I think we should be able to make anywhere between Rs 7 crore and Rs 8 crore in ticket sales from the match," said Bhaswar Goswami, director, Celebrity Management Group (CMG).
IPL might be the flavour of the times, but Kolkata continues to love football. Goswami's CMG is responsible for helping continue Kolkata's long affair with international football superstars.
"We kept our revenue target at about Rs 20 crore. At the final count, we will end up with about Rs 16 crore, a decent feat considering most big corporates have stayed away from the game," Goswami said.
Kolkata-based Rose Valley took home the title sponsorship, while another city based company, Emta, also put in cash. The only national company to be involved was Pepsico.
Of the Rs 16 crore, CMG sold broadcasting rights for Rs 3.5 crore and raked in sponsorship money of about Rs 5 crore. The match was broadcast in 152 countries. ESPN bought the game's broadcasting rights for South Asia for Rs 2.5 crore.
This, while the receipts of the International Cricket Council from World Cup 2011 were estimated at Rs 1,476 crore, while the cost of organising the event stood at Rs 571 crore. Broadcasting revenues from the 42-match tournament stood at Rs 1,062 crore.
Multi Screen Media, which owns SET Max, along with World Sports Group, bagged the exclusive IPL broadcasting rights for nine years at Rs 8,200 crore. The deal came into effect just before IPL-season II in 2009.
Last valued, IPL, a cricketing tournament in which 74 matches were played in the 2011 edition, is a $1-billion enterprise. "When one compares the ticket sales between IPL matches and this, one has to consider after the last renovation of the Eden Gardens stadium, the capacity shrunk to 65,000. The YBK (Yuva Bharti Krirangan, or the Salt Lake Stadium) can accommodate up to 1,20,000 people", said a KKR official. The match between Argentina and Venezuela, played at YBK, is a one-off official Fédération Internationale de Football Association friendly. That the game of football is far behind cricket in terms of popularity as well as money generated is possibly proved by the fact that the stadium remained 30 per cent empty.
"We printed about 100,000 tickets. Of these, tickets worth Rs 6 crore are still pending because I have not yet exhausted the ones I circulated earlier. Realistically, we should see a 70 per cent house," Goswami told Business Standard before the match.
However, considering the glamour quotient, the match seems to rival IPL matches. The stadium accounts for 12 corporate boxes, which Goswami calls "super-hospitality boxes". "Each super-hospitality box was sold for Rs 7.5 lakhs. Of these, a box was bought by United Breweries and one by Fortis, while four others were bought by Kolkata-based business houses," Goswami said. Bollywood actors like Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra and Ria Sen were also present at the stadium to witness Argentina trump the Venezuelan side 1-0.
According to Sunando Dhar, chief executive of I-League, the club football league in India, the greatest contribution of the match would be the buzz it creates around football. "How much money the agencies make out of the deal is irrelevant. The highest contribution the match would make is it would bring football into the news," Dhar said. The I-League is organised every year at a cost of Rs 13 crore, he added.
