The Bangalore team is going to be called the Bangalore Royal Challengers!Come on! It is the one city in the competition I may have a slight fondness for. Delhi is beautiful, and they have Sehwag etc, but come on, I haven't lived here long enough to support (shudder!) a Delhi team. But if I need to support Bangalore, I'll have to live with that horrible name. Damn you, Vijay Mallya.
Bangalore have Jaffer, Chanderpaul, Dravid and Kallis in the same team. While a few would consider this too slow a batting lineup for T20, I think Dravid, Kallis and Chanderpaul are itching to show the upstarts their armoury. Plus there is Boucher.
No worries on the fast bowling front: Steyn, Zak and Bracken are a handful, and Kallis can give backup.
Spinners will be Kumble and Cameron White. One great leggie and a pretend . Not bad, but could be the chink.
10 comments:
John,
Please dont be under any mistaken impression that this is about cricket (atleast not for the first few years). No one makes that kind of investment without seeking their pound of flesh - I think we are going to see commercialization of cricket to an extent that we have not begun to imagine. Cheers to Mr. Mallya for (as always) taking the lead.
To make money, there will need to be excellent cricket. Good pitches, good umpiring and a good balance between bat and ball are necessary to make a profit.
i second john
you cant make money by asking 22 players to stand in the ground...however talented the pool may be...a la world super test series...
cricket need not only be good but excellent to see the profits they are hoping for otherwise it will be just one of those bad investments on hype than substance...
how about Bangalore Kingfishers? Btw at one point, the Royal Challenge bottle carried an ode to Mark Taylor, for declaring the Aus innings, when he was batting on 334 - out of respect for Sir Don's highest score, also 334!
John/Straightpoint,
The product that is being marketed is not the cricket but the stars who play it. If either of you think that is not good enough, let me please cite the example of a small club known as Real Madrid - the millions of pounds invested in players was recovered in the course of a couple of years simply by merchandizing!! Real ofcourse saw a title drought for years, while the galacticos were there, but were and continue to remain the richest club in the world. Ofocurse, if you put so many stars in the same field, there is bound to be some good sport- good enough to draw spectators. The stars will have enough merchantability to not require a great finished product
TM,
You are being a little stupid now. Real's fantastic revenues did not come up overnight. It has a history of playing great football. It also has a habit of investing heavily in developing the game.
Merely buying great players would not have guaranteed them great revenue, unless Madrid already had an established fan base. The club earned it by winning all those European titles.
Real invest in good football too. They have a youth system which makes professional footballers out of talented youngsters. They invest in coaching camps in Asian countries.
They can buy galacticos and all sorts of pansies now, and play average football, and still make money, but that is because of all the hardwork that has gone ahead.
IPL should not presume to show up and make money.
John,
Accepted that all of what has been saif of Real is true - the difference in the IPL is that none (or very few) of these players need to establish a 'reputation' for themselves. They have already done so and have been bought.
Further, i give you the example of clubs like Man U and Chelsea - please tell me which players that play there are developed by the local training system? And how many are the result of development by domestic structure? Given that neither Smith nor Gambhir nor Ishant will be developed by any IPL coaching strucutre, is it not fair to say that all that the franchisees need to do is sell their marketability?
Look at this as well - the winning franchisee gets a mere 3 million dollars- given that they have all spent close to a hundred, do you think that the recovery mechanism is going to be sinking several more 100 million dollars into domestic structres so that they can make 3 million at the end of it??
Further, while I would love to discuss this with you on rationale, abusive ad hominem arguments (see stupid) are completely unacceptable!!
Well, at least I am glad you realized Real was a bad example.
No Tarun, the idea is not to sink more money into the youth system IPL does not need to do that because they're affiliated to the BCCI who have a responsibility to promote cricket. But the IPL franchises know that there are two ways they will make money:
1. Merchandise
2. Gate entries
To maintain both streams of revenue in the long run, the cricket has to be good. There is no escaping that. Especially so because it is so random. Jaffer plays for Bangalore and Ajit for Kolkata. So the there is already a huge dent in regional loyalties playing a part.
Anyway, you can do some reading up before we discuss this:
http://longstop.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/why-we-watch-sport-and-the-ipl-can-succeed/
Also, a thought:
The ICC had those Super Series. Big players. Bad cricket. No one gave a shit!
IPL can excuse itself from that fate of they display good cricket. And I am certain the bosses know that and have spent enough money on good coaches and shrewd captains to ensure this, as well.
John,
Sending me to read some blogs that support your ideas do not strenghten your argument. To put this into perspective, the gate receipts are only a miniscule percentage of the revenue from any cricket match - take for instance the Super Series, where each ticket was sold for 46 Australian Dollars a day. Assuming that 1 lakh people watched that match at the stadium, they generated merely INR 1.5 Crores. The ad slot for a 10 second slot on TV for that series was at an average 2 lakhs. So they made 12 Crores for each hour of advertising solely on TV- and horror of horrors, guess who stars in those ads!! So given that the super series was a shit concept in terms of quality of cricket, when will people realize that it is not about the quality, but about the saleability!!! Shit sells if shit is attractively packaged dude!
You missed a small point. Nobody really watched those matches, and by extension, those ads. Which means the advertisers did not get their money's worth. Means those slots will not be worth so much anymore.
If there are eyeballs on TV, it means that the quality of cricket is good. If not, it means that the advertisers made a bad investment. So, for the idea of the IPL to survive, the advertisers need to get paisa vasool in the first year itself - for which good cricket is absolutely necessary.
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