Lalit Kumar Modi used to be a die-hard fan of London football club Chelsea. But somewhere along the way he switched to cricket. The result is one of India’s most iconic new brands: the Indian Premier League (IPL). And after such a dramatic 2009, where can the IPL go in 2010?
Launched in April last year, the cricket extravaganza was the culmination of 14 years’ work by Modi. The IPL fuses sport with business and celebrity. The world’s best players, lured by huge payouts for a few weeks’ work, are sold off in an auction to teams owned by Bollywood stars and high-profile businessmen. They compete in the fast-paced Twenty20 format (each game lasts only about three hours).
“Over the years I studied how sports franchise systems worked and believed India would be a natural home for a world-class premier league,” says Modi. “Cricket is India’s greatest asset and entertainment property, but it had never been promoted as a TV property before and I saw great potential.”
Modi can come across as a dreamer - he admits as much - but there’s no denying his business acumen. He has worked in pay-TV. He introduced Disney to India in the company’s first joint venture, and later ESPN (he retains those connections - he recently spoke at the Casbaa Convention).
With cricket as popular as it is in India, making the IPL a success looks on paper a formality. But the task was anything but straightforward in a market notorious for bureaucracy. “I kept being denied access to consumers,” he recalls. “If I had observed all the rules, I would never have got to where I am.”
Scion of one of India’s richest families, Modi is now the country’s highest taxpayer. More than a decade ago, he tried to launch a cricket league but was thwarted by the game’s authorities. So he played politics until he was the one in authority, becoming VP of the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) in 2005, despite attempts to use a conviction for drug possession dating from his student days to stop him.
Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director, South Asia, at Ogilvy & Mather, has known Modi for almost 20 years, having worked with his father. “He has always been a very ambitious human being, and despite having been rejected by the system has created a magical brand,” he says. “He is a man in a hurry and can be a bit volatile, but if you make sense, he is wonderful to work with.”
With the world’s best cricketers and a US$1.26 billion broadcast deal, the IPL’s first season was a hit. Arguably its biggest challenge came in 2009. For security reasons surrounding this year’s Indian general elections, the decision was made at 20 days’ notice to hold season two in South Africa, seemingly at considerable inconvenience to sponsors such as Vodafone.
Modi is characteristically keen to get across the scale of the setback, describing it as “a logistical challenge unmatched in the history of sports”. Yet he maintains that it did not dent the IPL’s commercial relationships or prospects. He breezily describes staging the event in a country where 70 per cent of the population had never watched the sport in their lives as “a wonderful adventure” for all concerned, not to mention an opportunity to internationalise the IPL fanbase.
Modi claims sponsors were more than satisfied with the IPL’s offering. Aside from the standard perks of sponsorship, Kingfisher benefited from a slew of new business as the event’s exclusive carrier. In return, the airline assisted in the last-minute move by changing flight plans and helping with ticket sales. “We’re working constantly with agencies and advertisers to ensure that involvement reaches beyond advertising,” he says.
As the IPL moves into its third season (back in India) , one thing is certain: Modi is unlikely to rest on his laurels. Following the success of the first season the world’s cricket authorities set up the Champions League Twenty20 for teams from around the world. Modi also chairs that competition (a recognition that he really has changed the game), but he is clear that his priority is turning the IPL into cricket’s number one brand.
“We must ensure the IPL remains the number one league,” he says, adding that by 2011 he aims to have added two teams and expanded the schedule from 59 games to 93. “Our ambition is to sit at the top table alongside FIFA and Formula One. We are the sixth most valuable sports brand in the world and our ambition is to keep going.”
Lalit Modi’s CV
2008 Chairman, Champions League Twenty20
2008 Chairman and commissioner, Indian Premier League
2005 Vice-president, Board of Control for Cricket in India
2001 Vice-president, Punjab Cricket Association
This article was originally published in 17 December 2009 issue of Media.
