The Pro Kabaddi league’s fifth season ended on Saturday with Patna Pirates beating Gujarat Fortunegiants 55-38 to lift their third straight title.
The encounter in Chennai brought to an end the league’s longest ever season, spanning over 13 weeks in which as many as 138 matches of kabaddi were played. That’s almost 11 matches per week.
Even before the fifth season started, there were reports that the sponsorship revenue for Pro Kabaddi has risen 320% compared to the previous year, while the number of advertisers have jumped three-fold.
Star had signed up nine sponsors for season five, including title sponsor Vivo, who came on board for a five-year deal worth Rs 300 crore. According to industry estimates, the channel’s other television sponsors for season five paid anywhere between Rs 10 crore to Rs 15 crore to be associated with the league.
However, down at the franchise level, things are a bit different. While the number of sponsors – principal and associate – per franchise varied between five and as many as 14, the value of the deal would have been far lesser compared with the league, according to industry experts.
A principal sponsor of a kabaddi franchise, one that would have had its logo on the team’s jersey, would have paid anywhere between Rs 1 crore to Rs 3 crore for the season, according to industry estimates. That’s up to Rs 15 lakh per match.
Compare this with the Indian Super League, whose television reach was lower than Pro Kabaddi last year, but a sponsor would still pay anywhere between Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 crore for a season. That’s Rs 30 lakh to Rs 60 lakh per match. Over in the IPL, it can go up to Rs 20 crore for the season, or Rs 1.3 crore per match.
Supratik Sen, CEO of the U-Mumba franchise, believes there is a bias in the industry against kabaddi. “People will put money on anything else but kabaddi,” he said. “If I’m asking a brand for the same amount it paid to an ISL team for lesser television ratings, then why wouldn’t you put it in Pro Kabaddi?
“If I had to compare the TV time that U-Mumba was on air – for three months and 22 games a season – vis-à-vis the IPL and ISL (14 matches per season), we are not even getting one-fifth of what teams in those leagues receive for jersey sponsorship,” he added.
Not aspirational enough
According to industry experts, kabaddi’s basic problem is that, in simple words, it is not cricket. “We’ve tried to sell kabaddi with various levels of success but it’s not something that excites marketers unless you are a pan-Indian mass brand,” said Indranil Das Blah, founding partner at Kwan Entertainment and Marketing Solutions.
“While the numbers are decent in kabaddi, the fact is that as a brand if you want to reach the masses you need to go to cricket, which gets you a lot of visibility. You may be paying slightly higher [for cricket sponsorship] but you are reaching out to a much larger audience.”
Brands are also looking for a sport that is “aspirational”, added Blah. An aspirational product or sport in marketing parlance is one that a large segment of the brand’s exposure audience wishes to consume.
“This is why your target audience will be young adults in metro cities,” he said. “Once they start using your products, it starts to trickle down to the masses and it’s aspirational. This is why the ISL clubs also do better. They don’t have the TV numbers but football is an aspirational sport.
“Kabaddi works well in smaller towns and cities where your numbers are coming from but it struggles with brands because it is not associated with being cool or aspirational.”
No appointment viewing
Another problem with associating with Pro Kabaddi is that the league has still not secured appointment viewing, according to Tuhin Mishra, managing director and co-founder of sports marketing and management firm Baseline Ventures. Appointment viewing is when a viewer switches on a particular channel at a particular time to watch a particular show or, in this case, sporting league.
“Pro Kabaddi does not have the appointment viewing that an IPL attracts,” said Mishra. “You may come across Pro Kabaddi while surfing channels, but it’s not that I’m actually looking forward to watching a Patna Pirates vs U-Mumba. And that translates with the sponsors, who are always looking at cost versus return.”
The other parallel that most brand managers will draw is that tying up with an IPL team not only gets them time with the players but also their imaging rights. According to industry estimates, for about Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore, brands can get image rights of two-to-three top stars of an IPL team, which they can use on their packaging.
“That will draw a lot more eyeballs than spending a crore for being the main sponsor of a kabaddi team,” said Blah, “because images of kabaddi players won’t work as well as Virat Kohli or MS Dhoni.”
One of the reasons why ISL teams also do well in sponsorship is that a lot of teams package their celebrity owners such as Ranbir Kapoor and John Abraham with their image rights.
“When we sell Mumbai City FC, we are also selling imagery of Ranbir Kapoor to an extent,” said Blah, who is also the CEO of the ISL franchise. “If a brand pays enough and comes on the front, we may even give them half a day with Ranbir, along with the players. That is so much more value than having just the kabaddi players.”
While Pro Kabaddi also has celebrity owners such as Sachin Tendulkar and Abhishek Bachchan, they aren’t as involved
Lack of media assets
How is Star, then, doing so much better when it comes to sponsorship for the same sport and league? Blah believes this is down to the fact that brands only care about FCT, or the free commercial time that is made available by the broadcaster for advertising their product.
“When you tie up with a team as a sponsor, you don’t get the kind of media assets as you do with a central deal,” said Blah. “You don’t get FCT, you don’t get any ad spots. I don’t think Indian brands understand the value of logo presence on jerseys. They will value a deal on the basis of the FCTs they are getting.”
However, both Blah and Mishra believe Pro Kabaddi has got its fundamentals right and that brands will, sooner or later, start paying decent money for team sponsorships.
“There are three-to-four factors that show a sports league is doing well,” said Blah. “You need world-class quality action, the world’s best players, great television coverage and decent infrastructure. Pro Kabaddi has got all of that.”
The only thing left is for brands to realise that sports sponsorships go beyond ad spots, which is something the market is still learning, he added.