Champions League: Brands associate with Chennai Super Kings

Ashish Khurana - Televisionpoint.com | Mumbai
When N Srinivasan, vice-chairman and managing director, India Cements, pitched for an Indian Premier League (IPL) franchisee, he was very confident that this would eventually turn out to be a high valuation, high visibility power play. Into its second IPL season, Chennai Super Kings, owned by India Cements, is turning out to be just that.

While finishing the inaugural IPL season at number two position has enabled the team to participate in Champions League, scheduled to kickstart on December 3, thereby bringing in more revenues, a slew of leading brands are queuing up for joining hands with Chennai Super Kings to line up a range of merchandise.

"We have already tied up with five leading brands - Peter England, Reebok, Aircel, Café Coffee Day and Camlin, and are in talks with at least three others including a multi national bank for launching a cobranded credit card and a greetings cards chain for bringing out a range of products including cards, soft toys and calendars," Rakesh Singh, vice-president, marketing, India Cements said to Televisionpoint.com.

"We are carefully selecting the brands with which we will associate and the idea is to bring out cobranded products that will add to the value of both the brands. Sports clubs in the West have built a huge following among fans. The merchandise launched by these clubs in association with brands have proved to be major hits." Rakesh explains.

A study by IMG for IPL, placed the fans of Chennai Super Kings at the top as the 'most satisfied' in the way the team and its owner conducted themselves during the tournament.

"Clubs in the West normally get about 15 per cent - 20 per cent of their annual revenues from such co-branded mechandise. While it is premature to look at that range since this is just the second season, eventually we expect that to happen here too," Rakesh said.

The company's tie-ups ensures a 10 to 15 per cent revenue share on merchandise sold on an average, it has gone up to 20 per cent in a particular case. India Cements is also planning to establish a estore on the Chennai Super Kings website to facilitate purchase of merchandise online.