Cozier on Sunday
The third season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is in full swing, with all its familiar style, razzamatazz, hyperbole and braggadocio as the game’s finest and wealthiest players perform daily for frenzied spectators in packed stadiums and in front of television sets in every corner of the planet.
Even in an age of incredible sporting affluence, the IPL astounded cricketdom from the start with the prices paid for team franchises and for players by Bollywood stars and movers and shakers in India’s booming economy.
The presumed value of such investments was validated two weeks back when the ownership of two new teams for 2011 were auctioned.
One, to be based in the city of Pune, fetched US$370 million; the other, for Kochi, went for US$333 million. They were more than double what the most expensive original franchises cost.
Some experts estimate that the price tag on teams will eventually rise to US$500 million.
From the start, television rights sold for US$1 billion.
DLF, one of India’s largest real estate companies, paid US$50 million for overall sponsorship. A host of others are forking out silly money to get on the bandwagon.
No wonder Lalit Modi, the IPL’s initiator and its chief spark since its inception, is in buoyant mood.
“I keep reading about a recession,” he boasted after his most recent coups. “There is no recession for the IPL.”
He predicts that the IPL will become bigger than America’s two most prominent sporting bodies, the National Football League (NFL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA), and soccer’s English Premier League (EPL).
He goes even further.
“IPL is going to become the world’s biggest brand,” he says. “In any case, we’re already India’s global brand.”
The United States, with its huge Indian expatriate population, is next on Modi’s list for the IPL’s expansion. Others – the Middle East, China, perhaps – will inevitably follow.
“Either we innovate and bring in new fans or we don’t innovate and we let the sport die,” he cautions.
Even more than the star players – and the film stars – his project has attracted, the dapper 46-year-old Modi is the centre of public attention, commanding exposure on the television screen during matches, surrounded by fans seeking autographs, hob-nobbing with influential politicians (or, more accurately, vice-versa).
This is the kind of confidence and up-front manner West Indians will remember from another high profile character who never played the game but who recognised the instant popularity of the Twenty20 revolution and used its potential for promotion – and who was even more omnipresent on his own television coverage than Modi.
In its way, Allen Stanford’s venture was every bit as mind-boggling as the IPL.
The Texan financier with a base in Antigua pumped an estimated US$80 million over three years into his two regional Stanford 20/20 tournaments and the infrastructure of West Indies cricket.
The victorious teams got US$1 million each, the runners-up half that. There was US$25,000 for each Man of the Match, US$10,000 for a catch or six-hit that happened to be voted Play of the Match. Individual associations were paid US$100,000 annually.
Stanford then lured the England and Wales Board (ECB) into signing on for a winner-take-all, US$20 million challenge match at his ground in Antigua, duly sealed by his so-called Super Stars, each of whom pocketed US$1 million.
West Indian cricketers had never known it so good.
“In three years, we’re going to be the best team in the world,” was one Stanford view of what his tournament would do for West Indies cricket.
Like Modi, he also had his eyes on the U.S., spending US$3.5 million on channelling television coverage of his second tournament into the small town of Fort Collins, Colorado, as a pilot project (bizarrely, in the middle of winter).
In his case blatant self-promotion was the game and the money was not his.
It was an elaborate ego trip allegedly financed by the portfolios of those who invested in his financial empire – and, eventually, led to his trip into a U.S. federal prison where he awaits trial for what the authorities describe as a Ponzi scheme and “a fraud of shocking magnitude”.
Unlike Modi, Stanford didn’t look for others to join his venture – perhaps, in light of future events, understandably so. It was, he said, “just a part of our marketing campaign” for the Stanford financial empire. Even so, Caribbean companies were small fry compared to his and, in any case, were rarely inclined to get involved in West Indies cricket. They might also have been wary of his questionable reputation among informed Antiguans.
When Digicel pointed out that it was the official sponsor of West Indies cricket and, as such, should be involved in the US$20 million match against England, Stanford only acceded after the ruling of the London Court of International Arbitration.
Whether he could have kept it going, even if his money was legitimate, is a moot point.
Modi’s method has been entirely different.
He is dealing with a population of 1.2 billion of rapidly increasing wealth in a nation where cricket is followed, even more than it once was in the West Indies, with the fervour of a religion.
Especially after India won the first International Cricket Council (ICC) Twenty20 World championship in South Africa in 2008, he had little problem finding willing buyers into a league featuring cricket’s newest and most popular form and with some of the most identifiable international players attracted by unprecedented fees for a series over six weeks.
Yet there are reputable skeptics in India who question the IPL’s long term sustainability. All the millions already raised through franchises go to the IPL and its parent body, the Board of Control for Cricket In India (BCCI) – and, of course, the players.
The doubts from those, such as the internet blogger Sanjay Jha, concern the bottom line for the investors.
“The truth is that it is a losing business deal,” he wrote after the recent payouts for the Pune and Kochi franchises. “Irrecoverable losses will make it unsustainable. It is a commercially illogical investment.”
In the meantime, highly paid batsmen lash DLF Maximums (sixes) by the hundreds, players enjoy a Citibank Money of Success, the cheer-leaders do their thing, fireworks light up the night sky and Modi smiles all the way to the bank.
For the moment, at least, the IPL is flourishing. The only question is for how long.
