India’s Disappointing World Cup Performance-Lessons Learnt

While the anger at the tame loss to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka has been mellowing down, many of the avid fans are still at a loss to explain what hit their team during the World Cup. India has always been a poor starter in World Cups with the 1999 and 2003 editions being prime examples. But, the same Indian team triumphed 3-1 over the Windies and 2-1 over the mighty Sri Lankans hardly a month before the World Cup. India also brutally knocked off the Windies in the warm up game and had a good outing against the Netherlands too. So, it was natural for broadcasters, Ad agencies and Corporate India to be optimistic and to use the occasion to reap profits. But, the unpredictable sport had its first victim in Pakistan and then claimed its second casualty- India.

What are the lessons that these marketing people can learn from this Experience?

1)Company perspective-First of all there should be far greater accountability from the players. Performance based short term contracts on Brand Endorsements with a greater emphasis on variable pay of around 50% to start with  is the way to go about. This is not done to spur the player to get a greater reward but to limit the losses to the Company through advertisements in case of sustained poor performances from the playerresulting in a significant drop in his brand value.Thus, the reduced risk of Brand endorsement would help the Corporate.

2) Broadcasters perspective-While the television rights for future broadcasts are bid, the broadcasters should go for a short term period stipulating the necessary clauses in the Agreement stating that the early exit of the team would result in reduced pay for the bid. This would reduce the loss to the broadcasters arising from reduced TRP’s and persistent demand from the Companies to lower the Ad rates. Thus, the loss (economic opportunity loss) in case of a poor performance by the team would go to BCCI as the effective rate of the bids will fall down as mentioned in the contract

3) The BCCI perspective- The BCCI in order to reduce its risk and to defend its exchequer would in turn go for a well devised performance based contract (it is already supposedly giving the final touches to this) which would keep a tap on the players and also would result in less outgo in case of poor performance

Thus, these steps listed would do more good to the Broadcasters and the companies releasing their ads. The cash stuffed BCCI would suffer but as mentioned, it will devise ways to mitigate that. Thus, India’s World Cup loss is a pointer to all that though this is a country that idolizes cricketers and deems them to be semi-God, they are equally prone to bashing when they perform poorly. Thus, in this volatile game of cricket, it is time for the Coporate India, Ad agencies and Broadcasters to be guarded and mitigate their losses rather than keep tainted hopes on the performance of these largely hyped cricketers