Cracking the India Code: Establishing Global Sports Properties
Navigating the complex Indian consumer ecosystem
India.
The enigma, the complexity, the diversity, the young country, the potential superpower. It can be given many adjectives. I personally like to call it ‘the Rising Giant’, rising maybe much sooner than later.
After a devastating pandemic period, India might just be inching back to the rapid growth mode. True, it’s not in the same pace but the consumer intention is there. Consider some of the spending indicators as mentioned in the India Consumer Spending Outlook 2022 by community platform LocalCircles
India has an estimated 297 million households, we can do the math and infer. This is apart from the numerous statistics which can be put to drive home the strength of India.
The point is, no business organization including sports properties can really ignore India. Thousands of global corporations have come here, some have been wildly successful and some have failed. The difference is, successful corporations took time to understand Indian consumers and those who failed, relied more on statistics than focusing on the underlying Indian psyche
This is particularly true for the global sports properties. They are yet to crack ‘the India code’. Else why would we see only a few Indian brands leveraging the same global sports properties to drive their marketing objectives
In this article, we try to unlock the key to marketing global sports properties in India
Indian Sports Consumption Appetite
First up, it’s important to know that India has got a tremendous appetite for global sports properties. Just a sample number viewership data collected from various sources, as claimed by the organizers or broadcasters, gives us an idea of the popularity in India
This would lead to some obvious questions:
“If India is a cricket dominated country, then where are the fans of other sports in India?”
“If India is such an important country, then why aren’t brands partnering with them here?”
Well, that’s the missing piece.
Sadly, there hasn’t been any sustained effort by the properties to reach out to these fans and as a result, they are not visible. The brands are not at all aware if their consumers are fans of these sports and this makes them extremely skeptical about partnering with the properties
The Challenging Ecosystem
Unlike cricket, it’s a lot more challenging for the ‘other’ sports. The primary reason is ‘lack of identification’ of the target audience. They exist but they are not visible. In my 20+ years of experience in dealing with the Indian consumer, from metros to deep rural villages with less than 500 population, I can safely say there are broadly two categories of Indian audience
a. The Visible One - mostly young fans, college goers / first full time job holders, 16-25 years, vocal on social media and otherwise, strong opinions, member of supporters’ clubs, are seen in groups, lesser degree of disposable income
b. The Silent One - 25+ - goes upto 40+ years, more responsible, more disposable income, seen in smaller groups of close friend circle, weekend sports-watcher and supports his favourite club strongly, less vocal on social media, shares opinions mostly within his circle
‘The Visible Ones’ are fairly easily identified and can be targeted while the bigger challenge is to identify ‘the Silent One’. They are a big chunk of audience and spread out. This is the audience which really drives all the media advertisements, in cricket and for other sports. While it’s fairly logical to assume this audience knows and would probably be watching cricket, so brands are quite confident of placing their ad dollars on cricket. But when it comes to other sports, brands don’t really know whether it’s their consumers
The key is to know more about them!
Cracking the Code
Here are my pointers to crack this code
1. Understand India geographically: India is not a 3/4-city country. There is a huge India beyond the top six cities. The diversity is such that cultures change every 100 kms. Food habits, language, sentiments are hyperlocal. The fan exists in such an ecosystem and contributes to an astonishing amount of sports viewership. These fans never get the chance of acknowledging their love for their favorite club. Their voices are drowned in the social media matrix. A supporters’ club in a far-flung town called Shillong in the state of Meghalaya, northeast India, consists of over 100 members knows all the latest fan chants of their favourite football club. That’s the depth we are talking about
2. Know and Understand Indian fans: Social media might be able to identify and create a accurate profile between a fan from a north Indian town versus a fan from south Indian town but that data is the property of the social media platform and they are not likely to share this!
a. How much would the sports property know beyond the conventional matrix shared by social media channels about India.
b. How much would a linear television channel tell us about the sports fan?
c. What does the fan want?
The answers to these and more such questions are the missing link to understand the Indian fan. Once the sports property cracks this, the brands would be more than happy to associate with them. This requires creating touch points and regular interaction. To begin with, use of advanced analytics tools can be employed. One such tool is the Fan Analytics Engine developed by CXsphere
3. Create Interaction Touchpoints: A WWE / Chelsea / Barcelona fan can interact with amongst themselves through only three touchpoints - WhatsApp group, local supporters club meet-ups and social media. Great! But how does s/he get to purchase the latest kit? Or other items? They end up buying knock-offs from various sources. What stops the sports properties to establish a physical merchandise store? These areas serve more than merchandise, they are places where a fan gets to meet a like-minded person and thus a network is built. In a country like India, these things matter a lot. Cost can be worked upon. There are many other low-cost touch-points that can be explored
4. Establish presence: A sports property should take the approach of building their interaction from scratch. While academies/interaction through sports management institutes are a great place to connect with people from the industry, it’s not enough. The fans are just outside the industry circle. The interaction should be more pronounced with the fans. Establishing visibility is a great way. One way could be to target the 5-a-side football turfs. By a guesstimate, there are more than 750 such turfs across 4 cities. They are booked for 4 hours every day at least. Assume 10 people playing per hour for 4 hours every day for 150 days in a year across 300 such turfs, the math suggests a figure of, hold your breath, 1.8 million exposures! And that would mean probably getting to connect with at least 20% hardcore football fans, that is 360k. Interesting? Now consider setting up a Premier League merchandise cum meet-up mini-store at these turfs, it can change the whole dynamics of football consumption in India.
Time to ACT
I can go on with the ideas. The point is to act at the earliest. The interest in global sports will only grow from here and the earlier they initiate some fan centric action, the sooner they can get brands signing up for partnerships.
Hoping to see some action soon. I’m open for discussions with anyone interested:)