MUMBAI: Tier two sports in the country appear to be reaping a harvest despite the combined negative impact of demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) that has curtailed big money spending on sport.
Mumbai City FC is poised to register an increase in sponsorship amount by more than 50 per cent over last year. The team’s CEO Indranil Das Blah told Sportzpower.com that the franchise has sold its entire inventory and has a total of 20 partners on board, at last count.
The fourth edition of the Indian Super League, which boasts several firsts, kicks off on 17 November 2017. The league will have ten teams participating as against eight last year, all the matches will be played on weekends, and telecast at prime time is sure to fetch heightened viewership. Add to it a longer season of five months. All these factors have contributed to bringing in additional revenues this year, Blah points out.
Title sponsors Ace group, a real estate brand, have renewed their association for the third year in a row and aggregator app OkSir is again on board. New names that will make their presence felt on the Mumbai City FC jersey are a handset company, a car brand and some more. While the eight spots on the jersey are sold out, partners will smaller budgets are associating themselves with the franchise for player imagery rights, club logo rights and other benefits. “The spike in awareness about the sport, with the Prime Minister himself making a pitch for it, has helped bring in more brand association as well as viewer interest,” says Blah.
The advantage for the ISL franchises, he points out, is that football does not seek huge monies unlike huge properties like the Indian Premier League. “So if you don’t have deep pockets and can’t associate with cricket, you look at kabaddi and football. And if you are looking at an aspirational target audience, kabaddi doesn’t quite work. So in a weird kind of way, GST and demonetisation have sort of improved the market for sports that don’t require heavy investments.”
This season round, Mumbai City FC has wisely decided to stay away from traditional media, costs of which are prohibitive in a city like Mumbai, preferring to focus on digital and outdoor spends. “Also, our core audience is youngsters aged between 12 to 30-35 and they spend a lot more time online than on TV. Most don’t read newspapers, so print becomes irrelevant.” Not surprisingly, digital spend will account for nearly 50 per cent of the total marketing spend for MCFC.
Apart from outdoor the only traditional medium the franchise will bank on to reach out to a wider audience for brand building, Mumbai City FC has focused on BTL activities like engaging with football academies, five a side pitches, pubs and schools. The effort appears to have paid off, as the team’s loyalty programme launched last week and ticket sales that have begun, have garnered appreciable response. Filling up an estimated 8500 seats at the Andheri Sports Complex will not be a daunting task for the team that filled to capacity even during week days last season, says Blah. But he is not looking at ticketing as a big revenue source. “People in Mumbai, with the highest per capita income in the country, can afford to pay more, but we want kids and college students to come and attend,” he points out.
Mumbai is offering the cheapest ISL tickets among all the metros, starting at Rs 100. Smaller cities like Kochi and Jamshedpur begin their ticket pricing from Rs 50 on.
The franchise is looking at breaking even by the eighth year of operations. “Running a sport franchise is a long term play. This year has been a revelation as costs have come down and stabilised and revenue has increased significantly,” says Blah.
