How India’s B2B brands swarmed the IPL

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As you know, The Playbook keeps a hawk’s eye on developments around advertising and sponsorship in the Indian Premier League. So the day before yesterday, when the Sunrisers Hyderabad demolished the Lucknow SuperGiants at Hyderabad, you'd have likely noticed that both teams prominently featured BKT at the back of their jerseys. Or even yesterday, when Royal Challengers Bengaluru played Punjab Kings, the former’s back of jersey sported KEI Wires and Cables.

It's been something that's gotten me curious over the last few editions. For a league that is probably the biggest consumer sporting event in India—often dubbed as the “second Diwali” or “India’s Super Bowl”, the IPL has fast become a magnet for what are traditionally business-to-business (B2B) or “trade” brands; products that are consumed by other businesses.

If you observe closely, every IPL franchise taking the park today is sporting a B2B brand (be it the jersey, pants, caps or helmets): from paint manufacturers (JSW Paints) to off-road tyre makers (BKT Tires), pipe manufacturers (Astral Pipes, Wavin), cable wire makers (KEI Wires and Cables), solar panel makers (Goldi Solar and Insolation Energy) to logistics service providers (Delhivery). 

That’s quite a departure from the early days of the IPL, when advertising and sponsorship, at least for the first four editions, were almost exclusively consumer-centric, barring Rajasthan Royals, which roped in UltraTech Cement in 2009, and the India Cements-owned Chennai Super Kings, which featured a cement brand on its kit. 

The Playbook reached out to five such advertisers via phone and questionnaires emailed to them. None of them responded in time for publication citing the silent period ahead of their annual earnings.

So, I went down a rabbit hole, and with help from industry experts, tried to unpack this trend. To be sure, business-to-business brands investing in sports isn’t particularly new. It’s been happening over the years, across various leagues, teams, and broadcast partners. Except, over the last three years or specifically, post-pandemic, these brands have been making their presence felt. It also comes at a time, when the overall sports spending pie in India has grown to nearly $1.9 billion (Rs 15,766 crore), a year-on-year increase of 11%, according to a recent GroupM-ESP report. Unsurprisingly, cricket accounted for the lion’s share of the spending (~$1.6 billion or Rs 13,701 crore), growing by 13% on a year-on-year basis. Little wonder, then, that some of these brands are cashing in on not just the IPL’s popularity, but also cricket’s in general.

The entry

To understand this phenomenon, we need to go back a few decades when Madras Rubber Factory or MRF began its involvement with cricket. In 1987, it established the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai, which is probably the first instance of a “trade” brand, getting into cricket. Since then, its involvement with cricket has only deepened — from iconic individual bat sponsorships with superstars such as Sachin Tendulkar, Steve Waugh, Brian Lara, and more recently, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers. The company had previously tied up with the International Cricket Council as a “global partner” between 2016 and 2020.

If MRF led the way in cricket, rival CEAT entered the big league sometime in 2015 when it bagged the IPL’s strategic timeout rights, which in industry-speak is a “central-level sponsorship” i.e. rights sold directly by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The CEAT deal, according to industry experts, was an opening that later brought a spate of foreign advertisers such as Saudi Aramco and Saudi Tourism. They too followed suit and took up central sponsorship for a couple of seasons. 

“That sort of paved the way for other brands to enter the big sponsorship space,” says Joshey John, Director and Head of Sales at ITW Global, a Bengaluru-based sports consulting company. But, these deals were at the central level.

For Ahmedabad-based building materials company, Astral Industries, the foray into IPL began in 2016, partnering newcomers Gujarat Lions and Rising Pune Supergiant (teams which replaced the Rajasthan Royals and the Chennai Super Kings which were banned for two seasons). Since then, Astral, which has a market capitalisation of $5.6 billion, has been a constant, having partnered with several teams at various stages.

This year alone, it has four associate partnerships (Mumbai Indians, Punjab Kings, Chennai Super Kings, and Gujarat Titans) and one official partnership with the Lucknow Super Giants. While those might be differently priced, it guaranteed Astral some benefits; a presence on the “lead arm” on the jerseys (for a right-arm bowler, the lead arm would be on the left), in-ground advertising during matches, and offline activations. 

“They (Astral) have been a very prominent brand in cricket for the last 7 to 8 years. They’ve taken up in-stadia advertising for almost every bilateral series that has been played in India,” adds John. An industry estimation of Astral’s spend this season is around Rs 20-25 crore for the five teams’ sponsorships. Ditto for BKT Tires, whose spend this year is estimated at Rs 40-50 crore for back-of-the-jersey sponsorships of seven franchises. The Playbook could not independently verify these figures.

B2B brands, however, are not advertising in IPL only for eyeballs. “It’s mainly about activations and the ability to activate these trade networks. Other than the branding you get on the jersey, there’s a whole lot of experiences that can be created and other deliverables that are part of the deal that can be leveraged,” says John.

Some of those could include meet and greets that typically players from different franchises participate in. Match tickets are often offered as incentives to their dealers and their families, with the opportunity to travel around the country. Dalmia Cement, an associate sponsor of JioCinema, for instance, has bagged access to match tickets, per industry sources, which in turn uses them to incentivise their internal and external trade networks.

“It is not too dissimilar to pharma companies taking out medical representatives on junkets,” says Karthik Srinivasan, a Bengaluru-based communications consultant. “The IPL becomes a huge event for dealers.”

IPL franchises don’t mind it too. “It works well for us. Other than the official partnership, the brand spends more to leverage its association through its activations— either via out-of-home ads, buses, retail shops etc. It also gives visibility to our brands and players, and helps us save on marketing costs,” says an official from an IPL franchise on a condition of anonymity.

This year, Goldi Solar, a Surat-based solar energy company tied up with the Mumbai Indians as the franchise’s official “solar energy partner.” This, according to Dhruv Dholakia, strategy head, Goldi Solar, is an effort to reach out to the consumer market. “It stemmed from our aspiration to refresh our brand and go beyond just the B2B market,” he told The Playbook in an email interaction. “In the Mumbai Indians, we found a perfect reflection of the core values that define our brand - a relentless pursuit of quality, unparalleled dedication, and a drive to excel in every endeavour.”

Post-pandemic push

While Astral and BKT may be exceptions having entered the IPL early, the B2B gold rush in the IPL is largely a post-pandemic phenomenon. There are three reasons for this. One, as a sports marketing industry consultant told The Playbook, many of these brands suffered setbacks during the pandemic. So in a way, they’re making up for lost time by lapping up available inventory.

Two, right after the pandemic, in a bid to attract advertisers, franchises had slashed their sponsorship premiums, paving the way for easier entry into the tournament. “The startups took advantage of that. And once the startups faded away due to a funding crisis, the B2B brands saw an opening and took up inventory on the cheap,” says the consultant, before adding “IPL also has a significant advantage, as compared to films because it is played over two-three months every year, while movies are seasonal. So this makes good sense.”

And the third, is a broader trend on account of a boom in construction. Building material brands have been dominating the B2B category in the IPL. This includes cement, paints, piping, steel, thermo-mechanical treated (TMT) bars, furniture fitting, sanitaryware, solar fittings, and plywood brands. That probably explains why the Royal Challengers Bengaluru have roped in Astral’s rival KPT Pipes Pvt Ltd as their “official piping partner”, a previously unheard-of sponsorship tier. 

“The surge in the housing sector has certainly played its part,” says John of ITW, before adding, “People have become aspirational and ambitious to own a house. So from that point, most B2B brands have started advertising in all these spaces.”

Brand power

For a B2B product, particularly in the infrastructure/building materials space, brand building—particularly at the trade network level is particularly critical, given that they are the primary customers, to create demand. Not just that, these customers often end up acting as business partners or even investors, and by extension, influencers for the company. 

It is also because in categories such as TMT bars, the end customer, the dealer in this case, may not know it by the brand name, but by which celebrity it is endorsed. That is why the ads are focussed on creating top-of-the-mind recall. And IPL fits the bill perfectly. 

“They don’t see themselves as B2B brands anymore. They don’t want that tag. They want to be asked by name and consciously chosen by customers, even though they are sold by dealers. Most of us don’t even know, or care about what pipes were used or what cement in our houses,” says Srinivasan, the Bengaluru-based communications consultant. He adds, “But thats where brand building comes in, to turn the situation around to, “Can you consider XYZ pipes for my house?”, as an ask to whomever is working on our homes.”

While not entirely new, some of these smaller brands are now looking to celebrities to build their image. For instance, India’s 2011 World Cup-winning captain endorses MYK Laticrete, a tile and stone installation brand. His CSK teammate Ravindra Jadeja is the brand ambassador for Saatvik Solar, a Gurugram-based solar module manufacturer. Why is that? One possible explanation is that several of these companies go up against established brands, and the celebrity tends to offer increased visibility, more so during events such as the IPL.

But will this hold? Srinivasan warns that clutter might be coming. “It seems very congested at the moment, particularly on broadcast. Every category in this space has six brands advertising. While the IPL may be bringing increased visibility, this clutter could also start working against them,” he says.

Also read: The mad world of IPL sponsorships

⚡️Quick Singles

🏏🧢🔜: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will invite applications for the Indian men’s cricket team’s head coach before the T20 World Cup next month. The current head coach Rahul Dravid, whose tenure expires at the end of the marquee event, will have to re-apply for the post, according to BCCI Secretary Jay Shah. The newly appointed coach will be offered a contract that will conclude at the end of the 2027 Cricket World Cup. The Board has also handed Lucknow Super Giants' pace bowling sensation Mayank Yadav a fast bowling contract.

🆕💰⚾️: Sixth Street, a US-based investment firm, is seeking to raise its first sports-focused fund, Bloomberg reported. The fund, the report added, will look to invest in “sports teams and leagues, media rights, and related businesses.” Sixth Street is a significant player in the US sports business, with a 20% ownership in NBA franchise San Antonio Spurs and co-owns Bay FC, a women’s soccer team. It also has a prominent play in European football, with separate deals with Spanish football giants Real Madrid and Barcelona.

🏀🤑🤯: The NBA is closing in on significant long-term media rights deals that could potentially fetch it as much as $76 billion in 11 years, Bloomberg reported. That number is three times its current value and includes annual agreements with Walt Disney Co. and Amazon worth $2.6 billion and $1.8 billion respectively. The league is yet to decide the third rights holder, where Warner Bros. Discovery and Comcast are contenders. NBC, Comcast’s parent The Wall Street Journal reported, is willing to cough up $2.5 billion a year for the package, more than twice that of Warner Bros’ TNT, which pays $1.2 billion annually.

📺🏈🤔: Netflix will likely stream two NFL matches scheduled for Christmas Day in the 2024-25 season, according to a Puck report. The report adds that this could be a one-off event for Netflix and not a full-blown entry into live sports, but “a continuation of its current dabbling strategy via the docuseries, the WWE deal and big one-off events like Tom Brady’s roast plus tennis and boxing matches.”

🏎️💰📈: Formula One (F1) generated a revenue of $553 million for its parent Liberty Media in the first quarter of 2024, a 45% year-on-year increase from $381 million last year. The strong quarterly numbers came on the back of an additional race — three in the quarter, as opposed to two last year. This year, F1 will host a total of 24 races, the first of which began in Bahrain in March. For the year ending 31 December 2023, F1 posted record revenues of $3.23 billion, a 25% increase from the previous year.

📖 Weekend Reading

Coco Gauff Is Playing For Herself Now  [TIME]

Rashid Khan: ‘If someone is going after me, I’m going to make it super hard for him’ [The Cricket Monthly]

How ‘fun’ social media accounts direct fans to betting giant [Guardian]

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You can reach out to me at [email protected] with any feedback (good, bad, or ugly), tips, and ideas. I take my mailbag seriously, and would love to hear from you! You can also connect with me on X (@venkatananth) and LinkedIn. Thanks for reading, and see you again next Friday!