Sahara's pullout from the much-hyped Indian Premier League has come as a yet another jolt for the tournament, with brand experts cautioning that advertisers will start questioning what is in store for them in the future.
Big spenders on cricket like Maruti Suzki India also agreed that after some point of time advertisers will begin to look for alternatives when their return on investments is not up to expected levels as viewership of the T20 league drops.
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Be it last year's controversy involving Lalit Modi, the man behind IPL, or termination of the Kochi team, brand IPL continues to lose its sheen as it faces setbacks one after the other, according to industry experts.
"Suddenly from being a much-hyped royal brand, IPL has become a brand when advertisers, team owners or broadcaster, everybody needs to ask some tough questions on what is there in store for them?" Future Brands Managing Director and CEO Santosh Desai said.
The coming season is very critical for IPL, if it does not do well this time, it is in for a big trouble, he cautioned.
In a surprise development, the Indian cricket team's longtime sponsor Sahara India on Saturday ended financial ties with the BCCI and also pulled out of the IPL by withdrawing from Pune Warriors' franchise ownership.
According to Desai, IPL's "engineering" makes it vulnerable to such shocks.
Besides the organizational issues, team India's poor performance in the recent international tournaments has also affected the prospects of IPL.
"Already, there is too much of cricket and viewership has been falling. With the Indian team not doing well there has been viewer fatigue. Moreover, IPL is an expensive proposition and advertisers will begin to realize that their return on investment is not as much as they expected," Maruti Suzuki India Chief General Manager (Marketing) Shashank Srivastava said.
He said at some point of time advertisers will feel that IPL is not worth it.
"What this will do is that advertisers will shift to other genres like general entertainment or news," Srivastava added.
Asked about his opinion about the latest controversy on brand IPL, he said: "Personally I believe that this controversy will not help increase the ratings of IPL although there is another school of thought that controversies help increase ratings. Last time during the Lalit Modi controversy, the ratings of IPL didn't increase."
For the season five of the IPL, advertisers’ interest is "lukewarm" compared to earlier seasons, media planners said.
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