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Cricket is the last thing on their minds as the high priests of the game are busy selling everything from toothpastes to underwears. Money, for them, comes faster than runs.

Sometimes it just takes a short message to give the big picture. This SMS joke best captures the cynicism and anger of cricket fans across the country. Within hours of India’s shameful exit from the World Cup, this message was circulating across the country. Emanating from India’s commercial capital and authored first in Marathi, the SMS targeting Sachin Tendulkar is symbolic of the disillusionment of the fans. Are the fans justified? That is a separate debate but the perception definitely is that cricketers are sacrificing cricket at the altar of crass commercialism. From endorsing alcohol to lubricants, India’s cricket icons are selling it all.

The last one year has seen cricket stars dominating advertising mindshare on TV and mega bucks going into advertising on cricket properties on TV. According to a recent study, sportspersons had the maximum, 58 per cent share in celebrity-endorsed advertising on TV in 2006 with new kids like Mahendra Singh Dhoni hogging the limelight with 15 brands in his endorsement basket. Even though he is a junior player, Dhoni gets a retainer fee of Rs 30 lakh per annum from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) as a B-Grade player. In 2006, even an introvert Rahul Dravid endorsed 12 brands, appeared in 22 creatives and got 6,48,637 secondages on TV.

CREW CHANGE

M.S. DHONI Rs 8 cr 75 days a year spent on advertising 15 brands @ 5 days per brand BRANDS ENDORSED Reebok, Reliance Comm, TVS, GE Money, Siyarams, Brylcreem, Titan Sonata, Exide, Castrol, Pepsi, Seagram etc. SACHIN TENDULKAR* Rs 40-45 cr 70 days a year spent on advertising 14 brands @ 5 days per brand BRANDS ENDORSED Pepsi, Cannon, MRF, Adidas, Sunfeast, Pantaloons, Audemars Piguet, G Hanz and Nazara Technologies * Signed two deals, worth Rs 180 crore each for 3 years, last year with two companies, which would manage his endorsements in India and abroad RAHUL DRAVID Rs 13 cr 60 days a year spent on advertising 12 brands @ 5 days per brand BRANDS ENDORSED Bank of Baroda, Max New York Life, Hutch, Sansui, Britannia, Sahara, Pepsi, Reebok and Citizen All figures denote players’ endorsement income per year VIRENDER SEHWAG Rs 5 cr 40 days a year spent on advertising 8 brands @ 5 days per brand BRANDS ENDORSED Adidas, Boost, Pepsi, Nazara, Hero Honda, Sahara and Britannia All figures denote players’ endorsement income per year SOURAV GANGULY Rs 5 cr 35 days a year spent on advertising 7 brands @ 5 days per brand BRANDS ENDORSED Chirag Computers, Hero Honda, Puma, TCL, Tata Indicom and Sahara YUVRAJ SINGH Rs 8 cr 40 days a year spent on advertising 8 brands @ 5 days per brand BRANDS ENDORSED Pepsi, Microsoft, Hero Honda, SBI Cards, Seagram, Trent, Marico and Reebok DINESH KARTHIK Rs 40 lakh 5 days a year spent on advertising only one brand BRAND ENDORSED Nike

From being a religion, cricket in India has become a Rs 1,500-crore business and riding this wave are cricketers. In the run-up to the ICC World Cup, while other teams were strategising and focusing on the crucial championship, the calendars of the Indian squad were choc-a-bloc with endorsement appointments. From launching colas to jerseys, the Indian team was seen mostly at brand promotion events, rather than the practice nets. Those who didn’t have too many brands chasing them were busy giving interviews on TV. Sourav Ganguly was walking his talk for a channel on February 26. As the team landed on Caribbean shores, India XI’s victory over Windies in a warm-up match further fuelled the hype. It seemed like a dream unfolding, almost like the commercials they shot. But reality has a way of catching up. In less than a fortnight, their posters were targets for angry fans’ footwear and tar. The ultimate irony was up against the Mumbai skyline where a Reebok hoarding featuring Yuvraj Singh says, “Sponsorships can’t get me the runs.”

The morning after, the brands left their ambassadors. It took very little time for the special edition World Cup cola, Pepsi Gold, to disappear from shop shelves. Commercials featuring cricketers have been replaced with Bollywood’s evergreens and some like Microsoft haven’t even bothered to formally launch their products (Yuvraj Singh Xbox 360).

It’s perhaps time for Dravid and his boys to note that for them cricket should be the end and not a means to an end. Defending the ambassadors of this cricket capitalism, sports marketing and talent management companies are going blue in their faces screaming from the rooftops that endorsements have little to do with failure on the pitch. That may be so. But the team’s preoccupation with corporate commitments when they should have been training does seem to have impacted their performance. In the week before the tournament they were shuttling between cameras when their competitors were sweating at the nets. Indeed, many were doing multiple shoots. Videocon Chairman and Managing Director Venugopal Dhoot says the company has shot several campaigns with Dhoni and Dravid before they left for the West Indies in March. It might take a Duckworth & Lewis to arrive at the inverse correlation between Dhoni’s performance and his endorsement deals but few will dispute there is a connect.

Strangely the BCCI did not feel the need for a training camp. Says Ratnakar Shetty, BCCI’s administrative officer: “Normally, there is a camp for 10 days before a tour. However, since the team had been playing so much there was no camp.” The only team activity before the World Cup organised by the BCCI was the launch of the official World Cup kit with Nike. Compare this with global best practices. Eight weeks before the National Football League in the US, players are put into camp and not even allowed to meet their spouses. It is not different in cricket. The Aussie team was put on a “loading and tapering programme” by its coach and fitness coordinator in the run-up to the World Cup even as they played the one-day series against the Kiwis.

On the face of it, Indian cricketers need to devote five to six days to a brand for shooting commercials or promoting the product and it would seem not such a big price for a secure future. After all, they have put a few years of sunshine before stumps. But the equation gets lopsided by the sheer volume of the deals being signed. The top five players have around 10 products each which means they are off the wicket for at least 60 days a year. And when it happens to be before a critical championship, it is bound to take the focus away from the game. Tendulkar, who endorses 14 brands according to an Adex study, would have to spend 70 days in a year on these deals, as he commits five days in a year to each brand.

With increasing penetration of TV in India, the stakes are rising. Tendulkar, for instance, struck two mega deals last year with two companies, which would manage his endorsements in India and abroad. He has reportedly signed a Rs 180-crore deal with Iconix, the sports management arm of ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The deal will give Iconix the right to manage Tendulkar’s association with different brands in India for a period of three years. As far as marketing deals with Indian celebrities go, this is clearly the mother of all, as it guarantees Tendulkar endorsement deals worth at least Rs 54 crore a year. Iconix gets a percentage of the total endorsements as its fee. Tendulkar has another deal with World Sporting Group, for his international rights. His asking price is approximately Rs 3 crore for a one-year contract with a single brand. Explaining the cricket icon’s tremendous popularity with the brands, Saatchi & Saatchi India CEO V. Shantakumar, says: “Tendulkar is not merely a sports star, he is what is called a love mark, a celebrity who inspires irrational loyalty.” Nobody would grudge the Little Master his prosperity but when the team fails, it is the stars that get shot down first.

With cricket being the only sport in India, corporates have been betting more and more money on players. It is estimated that about Rs 370 crore was directly riding on these men through advertising spots that media buying agencies bought on behalf of their clients from Sony Entertainment. TV has converted cricket from a sport into a business opportunity. Of course, Sony has been left with an inventory worth Rs 80 crore, which it was holding back and which will end up as a loss for the channel. As cable and satellite penetration touches 100 million in India, this is the only sport that delivers the Indian audience to marketers.

With 105 million cable TV homes in India, which add up to 500 million viewers, no marketer worth his salt can ignore a cricket-crazed country. The revenues from the icc World Cup show how the game has increasingly been monetised by TV rights. Nimbus paid $550,000 (Rs 2.5 crore) for the rights for the 1992 World Cup and clocked revenues of $2.5 million (Rs 11 crore). At that time, India contributed 20 per cent to the total revenues. The current World Cup’s revenues tentatively stand at $300 million (Rs 1,300 crore) and India’s contribution is 65 per cent. Besides the rise in revenue, the number of sponsors has also gone up to 12, against eight and four in the 2003 and 1999 world cups, respectively. With cricket delivering ratings of 8 points, consumer companies have been chasing these eyeballs by both using cricket stars as ambassadors and buying ad spots for leading global cricket tournaments.

This has seen the emergence of self-styled talent managers who are in effect brokers trying to sell the celebrity to as many buyers as possible as the intermediaries get a percentage of the deals they crack. Since the lifespan of a cricketer is no more than 10 to 13 years, he tries to cash in as much as he can in this period, claim experts. Thus, no sooner does a new player come into the horizon, dealmakers rush to him with a sign-on bonus and a yearly contract. And there are no clauses about performance. Devraj Sanyal, director at Percept D’Mark, a firm that manages the endorsements of Yuvraj, Ganguly and Sreesanth, says: “Slowly, the performance clauses are slipping in. For example, periods when Tendulkar is injured, there is a slackening of the contract and numbers go down depending on non-playing time, etc.”

What is shocking is that the BCCI has no norms governing endorsements. Barring a disclosure clause required by the Board, wherein all players have to share what brands they are endorsing such that there is no conflict with the Board’s sponsorships, it is a free for all. Players have raked in moolah even endorsing alcohol brands. In November 2006, the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued notices to the Union Health Ministry and the BCCI in a case seeking directions to restrain Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj and Dhoni from appearing in an ad for Royal Stag whisky. Endorsements may not be the only reason for the dismal performance, but they have come under the scanner as they have taken the players’ minds off their core competency—to play cricket. Sanyal agrees the team was “de-focused due to endorsements and appearance other than cricket.”

Those who chose to bet their brands on the cricket bandwagon are now reviewing their strategies. With the Caribbean debacle, many players’ contracts are likely to be questioned as will cricket strategies of many brands. So far, the performance of the player, the number of matches he played and his place in the squad determined his annual income from a particular brand. But now the performance of the team and the individual player will be woven into contracts so that the brand is protected from any downside in the fortunes of the team and the player. Anirban Das Blah of GloboSport, a sports marketing and talent management firm which manages Dinesh Karthik and Zaheer Khan, says: “Indians have a volatile relationship with cricketers, which is why we are not big on cricket as it is a risky proposition.”

Having burnt their fingers once, marketers will certainly review their practice of using cricket as an ad opportunity. Reebok shot with the players in January but has no plans to air the commercial anytime soon. With India out of the tournament, no one wants to see the players strutting on TV if they can’t perform on the field. Reveals adman Prahlad Kakkar: “After the team’s exit from the tournament, the production value of campaigns, which have ended up as losses, is anything between Rs 150 crore and Rs 200 crore for the industry. While Rs 1,000 crore was directly riding on these men, the industry will take a bigger hit in terms of poor revenues as sales of products will be hit.”

On the back of this debacle, media buying companies and advertisers are asking Sony Entertainment to re-negotiate the advertising deals as they now want to place their ads on other bands as viewership has plummeted. Manish Porwal of Starcom, a media buying agency, says: “We want Sony to consider giving us inventory on other channels as the current deal will mean losses in efficiency and profit.”

In the run-up to the World Cup, Sony Entertainment sold airtime worth Rs 370 crore to Indian corporates. Says Sajid Shamim, director,marketing, Reebok India: “The team in this World Cup was almost the same as the last World Cup, but we still went wrong.” Perhaps it is time for both sponsors and cricketers to introspect. It is time both sides took a commercial break.

-With Jhilmil Motihar

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