Fan Analytics as a Sponsorship Differentiator


Posted September 19, 2016 by Alisha_Swank

IPL in its 9th edition (2016), it had 335 million viewers and had TRP rating that topped the charts. The league per se is valued at 4.16 billion dollars and is the 3rd richest league in the world.

 
Behind all the glitz and glamour of the event, there is an enormous business engine running the game. The TV rights was sold for a record $608 million and every year sponsorship deals worth an estimated 378 million dollars were made. The fact that the teams are geographically spread across the country means that the teams do not compete with each other for fan attention. But sponsor attention is yet another story.

Most of the brands that sponsor IPL are pan India brands - meaning they are not looking for reach in a particular geography. For them Team A is as good as Team B because all teams give them comparable coverage on TV. Teams have a strong need to differentiate themselves from one another. Historically, teams have used team performance or marquee player availability as mechanisms for differentiation. These are very volatile and the teams have no control about performance or player availability. The result is that every team is competing heavily with the other teams.

The sponsors had a wrenching problem to contend with themselves. They invested tons of money into the game but was getting precious few by way of measurement - in other words, they were not able to justify the money they were spending. The metric that the industry uses was based on television viewership and industry insiders readily agree that this is outdated, incomplete and faulty. In the absence of any other metric, the sponsors were taking shorter bets (annual deals in place of multi-year deals) and were leaving purchase decisions till the last minute - hoping for a better deal. The effect of all this was that the sponsors were unable to build any kind of lasting fan connect, the likes of which are seen in the more advanced sporting markets abroad.

This was the situation Kolkata Knight Riders faced a few months before the 2015 IPL season. They had a strong incentive to differentiate themselves from the other teams - sponsorship revenues will be higher, sponsorship deals will close sooner and engagement timeframes will be longer.

The CEO of KKR Venky Mysore tasked Manish Kumar, Chief Digital Officer of KKR to come up with a solution for this problem. Manish had a series of meetings with Fantain Sports, a start-up focused on Fan Relationship Management focused on sports in India. Fantain was already engaged with KKR but in a limited way. Between Manish and Fantain - the way forward was clearly articulated. The picture that needs to be painted in front of the sponsors needed to be about the fans. The thinking was the sponsors are not paying to be associated with a team - they are paying to use the teams as a channel to speak to the fans. In this line of thinking, ability of KKR to speak comprehensively about fans was critical. Who they are, what they do, where do they live, etc. was one aspect of this. The other aspect of this was how effectively was KKR reaching out to them (or by extension will a sponsor be able to reach out to them). A completely new system was designed with just this in mind.

Now KKR generates sponsor dashboards for its key sponsors. The dashboards provides the sponsors with key insights wrt how well the team performed in the eyes of the fans (reach, influence, etc. across multiple channels). In addition, KKR is able to assign clear numeric value to the exposure their sponsors get through the various digital and social channels of KKR. In other words, there is now a clear metric that tells the sponsors what value they are getting in return for their sponsorships.

Both Manish and Anand Ramachandran, CEO of Fantain Sports, agree that this is only the beginning. Fantain team has built an analytics platform that captures information from lots of sources in order to refine the algorithms they use. But there is no disputing the fact that this has the potential to change the tone of the conversation that teams have with sponsors. In the end, everyone wins.
-- END ---
Share Facebook Twitter
Print Friendly and PDF DisclaimerReport Abuse
Contact Email [email protected]
Issued By Fantain
Phone 9900018395
Business Address 123 Industrial Estate, perugudi , Chennai
Country India
Categories Business , Sports , Tickets
Tags analytics , fan analytics , fantain , indian premier league , ipl , kolkata knight riders , sponsorship analytics , ticketing
Last Updated September 19, 2016