The Hindu Business Line : The Packer legacy and cricket marketing

When Kapil Dev catapulted India to the top spot in one-day international (ODI) way back in 1983, we saw them all in the traditional white uniform. Those were the days when there were no commercials between overs, no instant replays, no third umpire and absolutely no colour what so ever other than that provided by the crowd.

Today, we see the Men in Blue donning various logos; some of them using cricket bats with brand names. The very logistics of capturing the action has undergone a sea change. It is now a spectator's sport with the focus on entertainment and the economics of the game is a wonderful study of globalisation.

Marketing genius

Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer, who died recently, was instrumental in orchestrating many changes but no one could have imagined the consequences of what he started. Packer did not invent ODI; what he did was to give it a new direction. He redefined the ODI experience and that clearly marks him as a marketing genius who changed the contours of the game for ever.

Packer inherited a vast media empire of which Channel Nine, with a focus on sports, was a key element. Way back in 1976, he approached the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) and sought exclusive rights to broadcast cricket live through Channel Nine. He made an offer to the ACB that was more than generous by any standards. The Board rebuffed his offer and Packer, not the one to be put off easily, started the rebel one-day series called World Series Cricket (WSC) in Australia. The WSC did not prove to be popular and it collapsed.

A new look to ODI

However, the new look Packer gave to ODI lingered and evolved to what we see today. Packer, as a marketing professional, looked critically at what the consumer got out of watching one-day cricket. He set about enhancing the experience. He wanted to give a ringside view and appeal. He started by jacking up the visibility of the players. He brought in colour, to start with, and the players did not wear anything in white.

Each team had its own colourful uniform and on top of it, each player had his name emblazoned on the back of his jersey.

The cricket ball became white and he introduced night time cricket first in Australia to increase the live audience even on weekdays, on the one hand, and facilitate TV viewing over waking hours in other parts of the world.

Redefined experience

Packer had already, in the WSC series, started the trend of paying the players extremely well and getting their total commitment to the game. He then ramped up the technology wonderfully with cameras on either side of the wicket and microphones hidden on the ground.

Close-ups, replays, etc., were possible every instant and this added a totally new dimension to the viewing of the game.

The ringside view of the game was the essence of his redefined experience of watching the game over a TV channel. Of course, he borrowed heavily from other spectator sports such asWorld Cup Soccer and Super Bowl.

He shrewdly calculated that once the audience stabilised, at least in the playing countries, the transformed version of ODI could be sold to advertisers as a vehicle for their brands, logos and even for some of their messages. And that could be big money.

Building global audience

Packer saw all this well ahead of time and although the WSC collapsed, the ACB came around because of the changes made by him and it could also see there was money in it for everybody. Packer got what he wanted for Channel Nine and he continued to make various enhancements to make the viewing of the game more and more attractive. This was supply-side economics at its best because once the trend started the other world bodies governing cricket followed suit and the global audience started building up.

It was almost like the good old FMCG formula in India. You build the distribution channels first and adopt the `push' strategy to move your brands and follow it up with the `pull' strategy to get the consumer to look for those brands and consummate the sale. Once the global audience started gathering momentum more and more advertisers came into the fray just as it has happened over the years with World Cup Soccer and Super Bowl. FedEx paid $2.5 million for a 30 seconds spot on Super Bowl a few weeks ago!

The Packer legacy, which changed cricket marketing and made ODI into what it is today, has moved further on to bring about one of the most fundamental changes affecting India. Today, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) can rightfully say it is not only the richest but also most powerful body in the game. The commercial consequence of the Packer legacy is the interest shown by the advertisers and the money that is being generated for BCCI.

(The author is President, Telekonnectors Ltd, Chennai.)

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