5 factors that affect the brand value of IPL teams
If cricket is India's biggest religion then IPL is the biggest festival. A tournament that never fails to enthral the audience and keeps fans hooked for a period of 45 days, IPL has consistently grown in terms of the quality of cricket, the coverage and of course the revenue. There is no stopping the IPL juggernaut.
One of the most successful and highest grossing T20 cricket tournament for over a decade now, IPL has finally started to reap rich fruits to the franchise owners. A lesson that all the franchises seemed to have learnt over the years is that it takes time to build the team's brand value and image.
Since IPL 2018, with changes in revenue share policies by the BCCI, most of the franchises have started to make a profit and can see their brand value rising. The IPL 2018 brand value report by Duff & Phelps show that Mumbai Indians has the highest brand value amongst the IPL teams.
Let us have a look at five factors that affect the brand value of IPL teams.
#1 Celebrity Owners
When the King of Bollywood - Shah Rukh Khan does the signature open-arms pose, his 37.1M Twitter and 15.1M Instagram followers combined with uncountable admirers across the globe absolutely love it. The 70k audience present at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata erupts in joy on two occasions - one on seeing the prince of Kolkata, Sourav Ganguly and two when they see SRK cheering his Kolkata Knight Riders side from the stands. Celebrity owners have immense social media following and numerous brand endorsement contracts. As a result, it brings more popularity to the team and more sponsors willing to buy space on the team's jersey.
KKR has close to 17M Facebook followers, 4M Twitter followers and as per a report by NDTV, KKR was the most profit-making franchise in IPL 2018 with 19.87% profit. With the increase in popularity and profit, the brand value increases two folds.
Other such celebrity owners of IPL teams include Pretty Zinta (KXIP) and Juhi Chawla (KKR) who like Shah Rukh Khan have been instrumental in getting support for their respective teams.