‘Masala Coke marketing’ - How the IPL conquered cricket
In just 15 years, India's annual T20 tournament has become the second most valuable sporting property in the world. Here's how...
If you ever find yourself in the magnificent, chaotic city of Mumbai, make sure you visit one of its many juice centres.
You might be interested in trying a drink on the menu called a ‘masala Coke’.
According to Coca-Cola, more than 1.9 billion servings of their drinks are enjoyed in more than 200 countries each day.
This data set probably doesn’t include the masala Coke - a concoction consisting of a Coke (or sometimes Pepsi) with any combination of black salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, lemon and chaat masala added to it.
In his excellent book: "Maximum City: Bombay Lost And Found”, Suketu Mehta describes the experience of ordering a masala Coke in Mumbai’s Sikka Nagar district:
“When the Coke is poured into the glass, which has a couple of teaspoons of the masala waiting to attack the liquid from the bottom up, the American drink froths up in astonished anger.
“The waiter stands at your booth, waiting until the froth dies down, then puts in a little more of the Coke, then waits a moment more, then pours in the rest. And, lo! It has become a Hindu Coke. The alien invader has come into the country. It has been accepted into the pantheon of local drinks but has a little spice added to it, a little more zing. The cocaine is back in the Coke."
The masala Coke phenomenon tells us that however successful a global product is, there are going to be times when adapting it to the local culture (and tastebuds) will cause it to fizz up and become something entirely different.
This is particularly true in India, where globalisation has been warmly embraced by a burgeoning middle class after market liberalisation opened the door to all your favourite brands in the 1990s.
Take fast food for example.
From Pizza Hut to KFC to McDonald’s, aspirational Indians were keen to be seen frequenting these temples of westernisation, but true success came once these companies adapted their offerings to suit the Indian palate.
This is why today, you can get a Chicken Maharaja Mac, a grilled chicken double patty with habanero sauce in an Indian branch of McDonald’s and nowhere else. Or a load of vegetarian options such as the McSpicy Paneer wrap or Veg Pizza Aloo Puff.
Despite having the world’s most established menu, McDonald’s had to get a little ‘McSpicy’ to succeed in India.
The same could be said for cricket. Britain’s most staid and proper sporting export was keenly adopted by many of its colonies and India was no exception.
However, in order for cricket to really, truly take off in India, the masala had to be added to the Coke.
Enter the IPL
In just 15 years the Indian Premier League, which returned on Friday, has become the world’s second most successful sports league in the world after the USA’s National Football League.
The growth of the annual domestic tournament has super-charged India’s dominance as the key financial stakeholder in world cricket.
Last year, the streaming and broadcast rights for the IPL sold for a staggering £5.13bn for five years - placing it right up there with the NFL and Premier League in cost-per-match terms.
In 2009, Forbes valued the eight original franchises at $67 million each. In 2023, with the league expanded to ten clubs that average is now up to $1.04 billion- an annual growth rate of 24 per cent.
I believe the Indian Premier league is very much the masala Coke of sport. Take a successful global product (T20 cricket) and add some ‘zing’ to optimise for your local palates.
To understand what has made the IPL such a global power player you can start by looking at at the ingredients that made it one of India’s favourite annual events.
Ingredient #1 - Star Power
Long before Ryan Reynolds cast his eye towards a small Welsh football club, the IPL was turbo boosting its marketing through celebrity ownership.
India’s twin obsessions are Bollywood and Cricket. The two are intertwined through powerful notions which are deeply embedded in the national psyche from idolisation to patriotism to a love of the hero’s arc.
Only the country’s biggest cricketing stars can rival its best loved actors and actresses when it comes to voracious public adoration.
The IPL consummated this when it launched in 2008, as three of the eight original teams were owned by Bollywood stars: Shahrukh Khan, Preity Zinta (pictured together, above) and Shilpa Shetty.
Famous fans are one thing, but famous owners deliver a level of amplification and emotional investment that can’t be matched.
It creates a new narrative that goes beyond the field of play, brings in fans who might not usually be interested in cricket and leverages the promotional appeal and ability of people who know exactly how to promote stuff.
Ingredient #2 - A fan-centric digital strategy.
Indian cricket fans are some of the most receptive in the world, with two thirds reacting positively to brands sponsoring the events they love and are therefore, likely to engage with those activations deployed by the sponsor on various channels.
Brands that enter the IPL, through sponsoring the league or various franchises, often centre their activation around creating utility for fans, whether that be via AR filters on social media, interactive second screen games or setting up meet and greets - virtually or at events.
This meant that IPL franchises were well positioned when lockdowns hit in 2020 to help fans feel close to the action with sponsor-powered digital initiatives such as #WaveItWithPringles.
Fantasy games have completely taken off in India as the IPL has grown in popularity, leading to official partnerships with apps including My11Circle and league sponsor Dream11 which boasts 160m users in India.
Perhaps the most impressive growth has come on social media, where the IPL’s leading franchises are now challenging the world’s biggest football clubs for attention and eyeballs.
Astonishing when you consider the heritage that they are going up against.
Ingredient #3 - A fan-centric local strategy.
But fan-centric marketing is not just about creating digital engagement.
The IPL puts fans first by making tickets affordable, ensuring that India’s sport for the masses can be enjoyed by the masses. The cheapest tickets on the market can start from as little as 500 rupees (around £4.80).
It is not unusual to see IPL franchises act philanthropically to foster community engagement and fan love.
In 2018, fans of the Chennai Super Kings boarded the ‘Whistle Podu Express’ -a free train service put on by the franchise to ensure they could support the team in Pune, after a dispute meant CSK would be playing home games there that season.
Clubs are active across a range of charity programmes that help transform thousands of lives. For example, Mumbai Indians drive community love by allocating one day each IPL season where tens of thousands of disadvantaged children are bussed in to enjoy the match for free as part of their Education and Sport for All initiative.
Ingredient #4 - Tapping into regional pride
For a nation as vast and diverse as India, creating new franchises from the ground up, necessitated tapping into aspects of local pride and culture in a very pronounced and obvious way.
Each team has an anthem (sung by established local singers) and official slogans connecting to the brand of cricket or attributes which people culturally associate with the region. Local dialects are not avoided but instead embraced.
Franchises worked hard to place local heroes at the heart of each team from the start. This included Indian icons Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, who starred in the early seasons for the Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders respectively, before hanging up their bats, to Hardik Pandya, who captained Gujarat Titans to an IPL title in their inaugural season last year and India’s young left-arm pacer, Arshdeep Singh who leads the attack for the Punjab Kings.
Yes, the IPL has placed great stock in luring the best cricketers all over the planet and paying them handsomely. But franchises understood from the start that a core of local talent was needed to connect these new brands to the people.
World domination?
With TV money flowing in, the business titans and movie megastars behind the IPL franchises are understandably looking outside of India to power the growth of their brands.
As the USA’s Major League Cricket takes shape, four IPL teams have invested in six of the new franchises.
The recently-concluded first season of the women’s IPL has already been hailed a huge success, setting new benchmarks for professional earnings in the women’s game, TV viewership and attendances.
With a growing Indian diaspora in lucrative markets such as the UK, US and Canada in addition to fans across the world connecting to the clubs via their own favourite, national players, competitive international fixtures like we have seen from the NFL and the NBA, are a distinct possibility too.
The IPL has succeeded because it took everything Indians love about cricket, added a few ingredients to spice it up and created something perfectly crafted to their tastes.
New Video Frontiers: How streaming is transforming sports broadcasting
The growth of the IPL was one of a few subjects we discussed (as was the staggering £11.6bn paid by YouTube for NFL rights) at New Video Frontiers last month in London.
It’s a really exciting, disruptive time for sports broadcasting with ‘new players’ like Apple, DAZN and YouTube taking on the establishment giving rights holders and fans plenty of options.
But fragmentation and spiralling subscription costs is certainly fuelling the rise in piracy so there is a balancing act to be struck by rights holders looking to protect the value of their product.
Great to join industry experts, Minal Modha, from Ampere Analysis and FIFA+ Director Gerry O’Sullivan to chew over some of these developments.
And finally…
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This is great. I need to try a masala Coke!
The social stats on RCB are even more astounding when you consider that the event lasts no more than 2 months Vs the football team ms that are engaging with fans year round with fixtures