The IPL Fever…

The IPL fever has picked up in India yet another year. How could the mobile industry then be left behind? Mobile phone companies are tying up with the Indian Premier League and the teams to become a part of what has become one of the most exciting marketing events of the country. Bringing together Bollywood with the nation’s favourite sport, the IPL has a fantastic wide-reaching appeal for peddlers of lifestyle marketing.

The Indian premier league or the IPL has been in the limelight for all the right as well as the wrong reasons since its inception. In 2008 BCCI initiated IPL in the Twenty 20 format along with eight franchisees. Since India cannot have enough of cricket the IPL nudged the love we have for our respective states to make IPL an even bigger game than ever. Cricketers from around the world come together and play for Indian teams that represent eight states/cities in India. Fortunately for some, unfortunate for the cynics, the IPL carries an enormous amount of commercial weight on its high-held shoulders. The numbers are exciting! It is estimated that each match of the IPL churns an approximate Rs. 50 billion. That is no mean number. It’s a party everyone is enjoying.

Mobile phones have become a large-hearted player of these the game. They are pegging with the punters, creating mobile applications and multimedia games, and partaking of the timeout and playoff spaces. Some companies are offering mobile net for internet-enabled handsets, while others are picking up SMS and MMS deals with the Indian Premier League. The word cricket alone can soar the excitement in our country, and that’s exactly what IPL has been doing for the last two years. Just as anything new is accepted with slight hesitation in IPL’s case too it was not easily welcome by the old school of people who still swear by one day and test matches. The whole idea of only 20 over matches was just not real cricket for them. It still might not be but as long as it’s keeping the audiences engaged and money flowing in who’s complaining.

Here’s the one magical thing that the IPL has managed to do. The shortness of a 20-over match has made the game popular with the women too. So no more fights over the remote and advertisers can be rest assured that the real decisions makers are also targeted via their ads.

With all the hullabaloo over this exciting mix of sports and entertainment, social media had to be an active member of the game. Youtube and Twitter have marked their entry into the IPL social discussion space and how. According to The Nielsen Company, Twitter is the third most popular social media platform that discusses IPL. Using the Online BuzzMetrics technology, Nielsen also identified that Kolkata Knight Riders has been the most discussed IPL team of 2009 and 2010 on social networking websites, followed by Kings XI Punjab. Deccan Chargers is the third most widely-discussed IPL team in the social media. Simultaneously, Ricky Ponting is the most discussed IPL player, followed by Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and Virendra Sehwag.

Youtube is broadcasting live matches with only a 5 minute delay in this season. Social networking sites have games to keep up with the IPL trend and Facebook has become a popular means of IPL discussions among its gazillion members. UFO screenings on cinema halls have also become a popular source of entertainment among big and small cities alike.

Alternately, IPL has also used mobile advertising to a great extent to spread the word and generate interest. Since the inception of the league, its promoters have engaged in SMS marketing and caller ring back tones as some unobtrusive means of promotion. Advertorials of the IPL were presented to SMS 2.0 users and live scorecards are provided for easy updates. These have added to the promotion of the IPL like none other. Love it or hate it, cricket is a sport no advertiser can ignore!