Devangshu Datta: IPL - Chaos all around

The branding process will be impaired by the outsourcing so early in its evolution

Since the conception of the IPL, it has been on a collision course with the general elections of 2009. The organisers ought to have been aware of that. The inflexible global cricket calendar implies the IPL must be played in April-May.

Everyone knew that the current Lok Sabha’s sell-by-date would also pop up in April-May. Among IPL organisers, Lalit Modi is connected politically while politics is the day job of Sharad Pawar and Arun Jaitley. Did they all overlook these two bits of information and thus, fail to come to the obvious conclusion that there would be a logistical problem due to the date-clash?

Obviously 26/11 added a new dimension and so did the attack on the Sri Lankan team in Pakistan. The security requirements rose exponentially after those incidents. However, even without 26/11, it’s an open question if the home ministry would have had been comfortable. Handling IPL requires the deployment of vast human resources for bread-and-butter crowd control. Ditto the elections.

Given all this, the scramble for alternative venues at the last instant shows a puzzling lack of foresight. Perhaps the organisers did think of it and reckoned that the logistics could be managed. After all, circa IPL 2008, former Home Minister Shivraj Patil would have featured as the go-to guy rather than PC. Patil is more malleable and the BCCI would have banked on him letting IPL roll regardless of polling exigencies.

Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to postpone the elections. The IPL doesn’t quite fit the constitutional criteria required for election postponements. Postponing IPL instead effectively means cancelling Season Two. The guaranteed losses from a cancelled season outweigh potential losses from outsourcing playing venues.

So it’s Plan B. The only other option would have been to hire Blackwater or some such private security to manage the event and that would drive overheads off the scale. In terms of venue choices, South Africa makes more sense than England on several counts.

It’s cricket season in RSA whereas April is the cruellest month of the English cricketing year. The concept of 20-20 stand-and-deliver hitting adapting to an English greentop is incongruous. In addition, RSA has far better facilities for floodlighting than England (where it’s nonexistent) and the 2003 World Cup proves the Proteas have the requisite organisational skills as well.

Is it relevant that South Africa is also headed into elections? Not if the RSA’s security establishment feels it has the logistical capacity to handle both. India’s polling scales are unique after all, and will remain so until such time as the PRC turns democratic. The expenses of the 2009 polls will match, if not exceed, the costs of the Beijing Olympics.

However, the outsourcing is likely to lead to Season Two losses for the franchisees. Their overheads will rise while their gates will drop. It causes problems for broadcasters. If the outsourcing is successful, will this be repeated in 2014 when the clash occurs again?

The venue switch also causes long-term branding problems for all the teams. Sports teams need branding in order to build a dedicated fan-base. That takes time. Without the branding and the dedicated fan-base it creates, teams cannot survive in the long run. Locational stability is probably a key factor. Man U and Barcelona, to take just two examples, have global fan followings but their core support is local. Most team merchandising is sold within 100 km of their respective stadiums and local lads participate in their training programmes.

That process of branding will be impaired by the outsourcing of the league so early in its evolution. Can the franchises absorb the longer timelines and the inevitably larger investments caused by that?