BharatPe and TCS sign global sponsorship deals, Virender Sehwag becomes a tech investor, and other sports business updates
We begin this week’s update with news about Tata Consultancy Services replacing Virgin Group as the title sponsor for the London Marathon.
Indian IT services and business solutions company Tata Consultancy Services has signed a major contract with the London Marathon for six years, from 2022 to 2027. The new deal means that TCS is upgraded from a technology partner (since 2016) to the title sponsor.
TCS will, however, continue to provide technology to support participants, spectators and sponsors under the new deal.
TCS already has a strong sponsorship presence in major marathons around the world. In 2014, they signed an eight-year deal as title and technology sponsor of the New York City Marathon.
TCS has built an interesting portfolio around marathon sponsorships globally. They are the title sponsors of the Amsterdam Marathon and technology sponsors of the Singapore Marathon. Parent group Tata, meanwhile, is the title sponsor of the Mumbai Marathon.
Our second update follows the same theme as our first - an Indian company signing a sponsorship deal with an international sports property. This time, it is about Bharat Pe and ICC.
BharatPe, a financial services company, has announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with ICC. The agreement will ensure BharatPe’s involvement and integration at all ICC events, starting with the ICC World Test Championship in Southampton.
During their agreed term of the association, BahratPe will get an opportunity to integrate their brand with five ICC Men’s tournaments, two Women’s tournaments and one Under-19 tournament.
BharatPe has extensive plans to promote the association across broadcast and digital platforms, as well as to execute in-venue brand activations at all ICC events. BharatPe will also take advantage of this partnership by rolling out campaigns to connect and engage with millions of cricket fans and shop owners across the country.
This week’s third update is about Battle Ground Mobile India's pre-registraion numbers.
Battlegrounds Mobile India (BMI), the remodeled version of popular game PUBG, has clocked in 20 million pre-registrations within two weeks. Pre-registration for the game went live on Google Play Store in India on 18th of May, and received 7.6 million responses on its opening day. It crossed 20 million pre-registrations in two weeks, as Krafton said in a release on Thursday.
Our fourth and final update is about Virender Shewag and Sanjay Bangar taking their first steps towards becoming tech entrepreneurs.
Cricketer Virender Sehwag has teamed up with his former teammate and coach Sanjay Bangar to create Cricuru – a sports training startup that brings cricket training over the internet. Cricuru is an online platform for cricket coaching, which is delivered through a repository of video tutorials by professional cricketers and an artificial intelligence-powered tool for improving basic techniques.
This is a first of its kind training product in India and is available on the web as well as an app on Android and iOS. The main target audience is 9-23 year-olds, school and college students and 30-45-year-olds who are revisiting the game as hobbyists.
It’s good to see cricketers making a contribution through tech investments. Besides Shewag and Bangar, Yuvraj Singh holds stakes in Healthians, Holosuit, JetSetGo, EasyDiner and Wellversed through his vehicle YouWeCan (YWC) Ventures. Sports commentator Harsha Bhogle, meanwhile, has investments in Chqbook and Fantasy Akhada.
The fans would hope that many more cricketing legends become active investors in the near future, especially in cricket talent related tech products.
This brings us to the end of this week’s episode of Sports Business Updates.
I just wanted to let you all know that I have joined Clubhouse last week and I have set up a club called Sportsnexus, where I will be creating conversations around the business of sports and internet culture and also conducting quizzes and inviting sports business professionals to discuss topics around Indian and International sports marketing and more. So do follow me on Clubhouse @nileshd14, or search for Sportsnexus and join the conversations.
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