Pro Kabaddi League yet to strike a chord with advertisers

The much talked-about Pro Kabaddi League is just a couple of days away and most of the franchisees are yet to have sponsorship deals in place. But sponsorship is not something that they would lose sleep over, at least in the first year, say the franchise owners and Charu Sharma, MD, Mashal Sports, who is the brain behind the Pro Kabaddi League.

"We don't want to accept undervalued sponsorship as the marketers have not understood the worth of the sport yet. We want them to say wow, is that something we are missing out?," says Sharma. The likes of Kishore Biyani, Uday Kotak, Ronnie Screwvala and Abhishek Bachchan have bought teams.

Sharma says that in year one all the marketing activities would be taken care off by the league's broadcast partner, Star India. "We are keeping it modest this year," he says.  

Kishore Biyani's Future Group, which owns the Bengal Warriors, has just about managed to rope in its own group companies such as Future Generali and Capital Foods' flagship brand, Chings, as sponsors. Sandip Tarkas, President, Customer Strategy, Future Group admits that getting sponsors has been a challenge.

"I am sure things will change by the time the next season is played. It's a bit like KBC, which also didn't have too many takers for the first episode in 2000. But the day the sets opened their jaws dropped. I am sure when the advertisers will watch a kabaddi match they will not be able to resist. As of now all of them are saying that they find it interesting, but they would rather wait and watch," says Tarkas.

The sponsorship opportunities for an advertiser in a kabaddi match would either be ground rights or buying space on the jerseys of the players. Suprotik Sen, CEO of Ronnie Screwvala's Unilazer Sports (which owns U-Mumba, the Mumbai franchise) is confident that when the advertisers see the mud-to-mat transition of the sport , which would make the game faster, they won't be able to ignore it. All the matches would be held indoors on hi-tech synthetic mats which cost around Rs 2 to 3 lakh.

According to Vineet Karnik, Head of Sports and Live of media agency GroupM ESP, the biggest challenge for the organizers and the franchisees would to make the format interesting enough for advertisers to invest.  "As of now advertiser interest is low," he says.

{mosimage}Like any other league, the Pro Kabaddi League is also hugely dependent on advertising revenue. Despite advertisers remaining aloof from the league this year, most of the franchisees are confident that their advertising revenues would be substantial from the second year and would even help them to break-even by the third year.

Does kabaddi have the potential of getting as many eyeballs as cricket? Prasanna Krishnan, Business Head, Sony Six, which has bagged the telecast rights for The World Kabaddi League (to be played across India, Canada, UK and Middle East and has film actors such as Akshay Kumar buying franchises) says that it is unfair to compare kabaddi with cricket, which is today a multi-billion dollar sport. "For us kabaddi is an experiment, as we are on the lookout for a strong Indian sport which will help us connect with the masses."