India at Play

THE INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE (IPL) is an idea. And yet it sells. When the team owners bought the teams for millions, they did not buy a physical asset. Rather, they bought into an idea, which, over a period of time, has become a behemoth. They had to start from the premise that the tournament would take off. Only if they be­lieved in it could they agree that they would make money from ticket sales, merchandise, hospitality, and of course, broadcast rights. In 2008, for a T20 competition, no broadcaster was willing to risk everything. The format had not yet taken off in India and the duration of the games meant far less time than a 50-over match to monetise advertisement spots. Pitted against soaps and primetime serials, it was a risk no broadcaster could afford. While some suggested a revenue-share model, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was fundamentally opposed to such a concept. No sport league in the world could work on a revenue-share principle and the broadcaster had to have skin in the game and believe in the concept if they really wanted to deep dive into it.

Getting a broadcaster was key to being able to demonstrate to franchise owners that over a period of time they would start to earn signif­icant profits, and there was much more to the league than just vanity. BCCI was also playing on a new Indian mindset where the city had replaced the state as the primary loyalty for the youth. In my case, for example, I am an Indian first, and then I am from Kolkata. However, I would always say Kolkata ahead of West Bengal and no cricket tournament had been organised along these lines. The Ranji Trophy was played between states and other tourna­ments were zonal in nature. To get cities to play each other would be an attempt at creat­ing a very different kind of loyalty than before and mark a departure from established prac­tice. Would it work? No one really knew. Was it worth a try? It indeed was.

However, for the attempt to have any real meaning the format itself had to be acceptable to the masses. Some things, they say, are des­tined to happen and India’s victory in the 2007 World T20 in South Africa was one such.

More than anything, it was this victory that set the stage for IPL. It was proof of concept for the broadcasters and advertisers alike that Indians loved the format and would queue up to watch it primetime if it was packaged well. In fact, when Lalit Modi managed to get buy-in from BCCI President Sharad Pawar for the league in early September 2007 and walked out of the meeting with $25 million in hand to start player recruitment, little did he know what was waiting for him in South Africa where the World T20 was being held. Rather, with Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid withdrawing from the tourna­ment, it was the only World Cup which was being played without the expected fanfare and euphoria back home. In the absence of the nation’s premier stars, fan interest was luke­warm and few were backing MS Dhoni and his young brigade to do something spectacular. IPL thus was the classic underdog story.

Had India done poorly in South Africa, there was very little chance IPL would take off. Nothing succeeds like success as they say and the mo­ment India beat Pakistan in a bowl-out in the first game of the tournament, a young coun­try sat back and took notice. Here was a format that appealed to the impatient youth. You did not have to wait all day for a result and you also had the national team play in front of you. It was cricket of the very highest quality and had more drama than other longer formats put togeth­er. And when Yuvraj Singh hit the six sixes off Stuart Broad, the stage was set for IPL to take off.

What was still a problem, however, was the players’ auction. Never before had players gone under the hammer in India and no one really knew how the fans would take to a Sachin Tendulkar, considered the god of crick­et, being sold to a franchise. Will it go against the very grain of Indianness was something that was not known. BCCI’s decision to put the cricketers under the hammer met with vocif­erous opposition from more than one quarter. Moralists and politicians throughout India were up in arms against this public auctioning and in February 2008, some even threatened to raise the issue in Parliament. Gurudas Dasgupta of the Communist Party of India claimed that the auction had sounded the “death knell” of the gentleman’s game.

But then could you imagine the thrill of seeing MS Dhoni being sold? How titillating was the prospect of possessing the man who had won India the World Cup? You could now buy him in an auction. The very thought was enough to rouse fan passion and, more impor­tantly, investor interest.

What BCCI had got right was the formu­la. Matches played between city teams on a home and away basis with stars and industri­alists owning teams was a brand new innova­tion in Indian cricket. It was over Christmas in 2007 that these details were being worked out in Mumbai. Should franchises be assigned icon players or should they go under the ham­mer was a key question that BCCI had to an­swer. How would it look if Sachin Tendulkar was bought by a franchise other than Mumbai? Or Sourav Ganguly was picked up by anyone except the Kolkata Knight Riders? Would such things end up dividing fan loyalty and would such a move go down well with the fans? Sachin was very Mumbai and to force him out of his comfort zone wasn’t the best call and that’s what prompted BCCI to take the fran­chise owners into confidence and assign icon players to some of them. Their values also had to be pre-decided and they couldn’t be paid less than anyone in the auction either. This is where IPL was unique. While it was borrowing the best practices from the Western leagues, it remained very Indian in its core with Indian sensitivity impacting key decision-making.

And it has stayed this way. Ever since the in­ception of IPL, I have spent time with multi­ple team owners and industry leaders and have seen from close quarters what the league has come to signify for each one of them. These men and women run the country and to see them anxious is not something we are used to. Each one of them wants a share of the IPL pie and each one of them wants to win the league. That’s how coveted it has become. For exam­ple, the entire senior management of one of the teams used to leave the hotel together around 2PM on match days to offer pujas for the team. They would never be a minute late, and the kind of discipline shown in performing this rit­ual was unbelievable! Team owners, men and women who run big corporations are not as tense in their business meetings as during IPL games. One team owner clutched a worn-out picture of his family deity for the whole time a match was on, and every wicket falling or boundary scored was greeted by a pranam. Surrounded by friends and family, an IPL owner’s box best defines the complex Indian modernity of today. Most people in this box wear branded clothes and watches, carry fancy phones with powerful cameras and drive to the stadium in luxury cars. But when it comes to the game itself, they turn into devout god-fearing Indians who pray for the success of their teams. This is what makes IPL a very different beast in comparison to international cricket and explains its success.

Indian cricketIPLMS DhoniRahul DravidSachin TendulkarSourav Ganguly