The Indian Premier League is facing a rough pitch. With a little over six months to go for the third leg of the most successful cricket properties of recent times, with a brand value of $2 billion, IPL is facing hostile bouncers -- four to be precise -- that it is finding hard to negotiate.
First, IPL-III now has no central events management firm. Second, the international company handling its online business has terminated its contract with the Board of Control for Cricket in India, leaving the status of the portal IPLt20.com unclear.
Third, a clutch of international cricketers from Australia, England and South Africa, including Ricky Ponting, have announced their decision to focus on the longer version of the game (test matches and one-day cricket), as opposed to playing Twenty20 format cricket.
Players like Sri Lanka's Muralitharan are batting for test match cricket, even though he is crucial to the fortunes of Chennai Super Kings, the IPL team from Chennai.
Fourth, a section of advertisers are sceptical on the popularity of IPL-III as a television property next year, going by the lower ratings of IPL-II that was played between April and May this year.
The biggest problem, of course, is the termination of the 10-year contract with IMG International, a leading international sports and events management firm that conceived and managed the first two IPL tournaments held in India and South Africa. This is because the BCCI terminated the 10-year contract it had with IMG International over differences in the financial terms put forward by IMG, sources say.
This means IPL has no central events management body that will co-ordinate between players, state cricket boards, hotels and airlines for the third edition of the tournament scheduled to begin in March 2010.
The matter is likely to be discussed on September 24 in an internal meeting of the IPL working committee after BCCI came under pressure from the former BCCI president Sharad Pawar.
The IPL teams are also concerned. Says a top executive of one of the IPL teams: "We are extremely concerned by the sudden exit of a professional events management body from IPL. Whosoever in BCCI thinks what IMG was doing can be replicated by any local body or by the BCCI does not understand the logistics of handling a 59-day cricket tournament."
To make matters worse, the Canadian media firmLive Current Mediamanaging the websites of both BCCI and IPL has terminated its 10-year contract with BCCI that it won last year for $50 million. The Canadian company owns portals like IPLt20.com, Cricket.com, T20.com among several other cricket-related online portals.
Industry observers say Live Current Media was finding its deal with the BCCI an extremely high cost venture with limited opportunity to recover its investments.
"Live Current Media has exited from the cricket business altogether. This is a sign that IPL brand as an online property may have been overvalued by its promoters," says a media consultant who does not wish to be identified.
IPL insiders say the revenue from the online business of IPL is considered critical by the Indian cricket board. These include incomes from live streaming of IPL videos, T20 cricket highlights available in downloadable clips for a charge, online sale of tickets for IPL and other memorabilia and several other online revenue earning possibilities.
"When the contract was signed with Live Current Media, it was estimated that IPL will earn upwards of $3 million from the websites alone in the first-four IPL tournaments," says a source connected with IPL management.
IPL as a hot television property in 2008 generated around Rs 500 crore in ad revenue for SET Max, sources say. But this year, its second-leg saw a 10 to 15 per cent dip in match ratings though the net reach of the show was higher than IPL-I.
"The novelty factor of IPL is not there now. Also, the Indian team was the World T20 champions before IPL-I, so there was an overall excitement about the event. In subsequent years, IPL will settle down as a serious television event but the potential of generating advertising revenue has to be more realistic," says the head of a leading media agency.
For BCCI, the top priority is now to find an event management firm that is acceptable to all the eight teams. "The rest will fall in place much before the IPL-III kicks off once the matter of the management firm is settled," says a source in IPL.
