How IBL managed to strike gold against all odds

What went into transforming IBL from the league that
almost didn't make it to one of the success stories 

It is 11 am on an unusually sunny Sunday morning in Mumbai, but Ashish Chadha is still groggy. The previous night ended only at six in the morning for him. There was reason to celebrate for the CEO of Sporty Solutionz, which bought and ran the Indian Badminton League. Against all odds, the League had completed its first season successfully, and how. From the league that almost didn’t happen, it is being compared with the elephant in the room, cricket’s Indian Premier League, and perhaps more importantly, sans the controversies.

The smile on Chadha’s face betrays the relief at having defied the odds. The fates of the boxing and hockey leagues, which by all accounts, went down with a whimper, were still fresh in public memory. Sleepless nights weren’t new to him. In the last year, he has taken at least 300 flights, he says, trying to sell an idea that looked like reaching for the stars. It would either have to be a grand do or a feeble die.

And still, three days before the auctions a months ago, faced with an acute financial crunch, a lack of sponsors and widespread skepticism, at 3 am in the night, he and his team were still deliberating on whether to pull out. “We would have drawn brickbats whether we withdrew or stayed”, he reasoned practically. They decided to stick it out, and the rest, as they say, is history. Gate collections came in at Rs 2.5 crore, with stadiums being about 90 per cent full. He has already been sounded out for commercial contracts for the next year’s edition. Vodafone, the title sponsor, has indicated its continuing commitment.

Star Sports' aggressive programming & dual commentary
feed are some of the reasons behind IBL success

“When the idea was originally mooted, what the Badminton Association had in mind was on a much smaller scale. But we agreed to come in only if it was organised on a grand scale”, says Chaddha. A former national level player, and a veteran of sports broadcasting, having been sports editor at Aaj Tak and the vice president of ESPN Star Singapore, he knew that unless the league created a wave in its launch, it was doomed. The risk was entirely his. Unlike in other sporting leagues, where a professional agency manages it on behalf of the sports federation, Sporty bought the entire property from the BAI, putting itself in the firing line.

“When the idea was originally mooted, what the Badminton Association had in mind was on a much smaller scale. But we agreed to come in only if it was organised on a grand scale”, says Chaddha. A former national level player, and a veteran of sports broadcasting, having been sports editor at Aaj Tak and the vice president of ESPN Star Singapore, he knew that unless the league created a wave in its launch, it was doomed. The risk was entirely his. Unlike in other sporting leagues, where a professional agency manages it on behalf of the sports federation, Sporty bought the entire property from the BAI, putting itself in the firing line. 

But how grand did he expect it to be? Take, for example, the broadcast production, which was done in-house. A total of 17 cameras were used to capture the action for the first time ever in badminton. The London Olympics used just 12. The best badminton commentators in the world were roped in for the English commentary. At Rs 12 crore, his broadcast production spend was up to 5 times what a usual international badminton tournament would cost. It reaped dividends. For the final, ESPN Star Sports, the Indian broadcaster beamed the fixture across all its offerings in India, up from just 4 channels earlier in the tournament. Broadcasters in every continent except Africa paid for content. Figures that he received from YouTube showed the most hits from the US, not traditionally a badminton crazed nation.

He spent another Rs 16-17 crore on marketing, including the now famous “Is this what it takes to get your attention” hoardings with Saina Nehwal in cricket gear. “We tried to make sure that everybody, even those who did not care for the sport, knew about the event”. The players saw money that was unheard off in the sport earlier. “In one day, the player fraternity got richer by almost 10 crore”, says Chaddha, about the auctions which fetched Saina Rs 71 lakh and the likes of PV Sindhu and P Kashyap, around Rs 45 lakh for a two-week tournament. The badminton association is estimated to have gotten a fee commitment of about 50-60 crore over 10 years. “If you had to draw an analogy, you could say that Ashish was the Lalit Modi of badminton”, says Ramya Vankina, CEO of the Mumbai franchise, Mumbai Masters.

Year two, says Chadha, with thorough confidence, will see the League return a profit. The first year he took a loss of around Rs 24 crore on an investment of around Rs 100 crore. Even the franchisees which were projected to stay in the red till year 3, will start to turn blue next year, he says.  Convincing them to sign up initially was a tedious task that took around 30 meetings a franchise over 10 months. “Nobody believed that what we were projecting was achievable”, he says. It definitely hadn’t been tried in India so far. Throwing in the spreadsheets, he convinced them to commit between Rs 200 and 250 crore over 10 years for perpetual ownership rights. For the first year, the teams had to be served on a platter, he says, with his firm arranging the logistics of the teams, doing up the stadiums for the host teams and so on.

And then there were cancellations. The Chinese, boasting of the biggest factory of badminton players, chose to opt out. (Chadha expects the Chinese to participate  next year) The IPL match-fixing scam almost threatened to render the IBL still-born. Suddenly the skepticism rose by a whole notch, making it even more difficult to move forward. One of India’s most recognised faces, who had indicated that he would support a team, pulled out. A prominent real-estate company who had almost signed up as a title sponsor pulled out in the aftermath of the scandal. The entertainment quotient had to be stripped down. Cheer-girls, after match parties, all of that went out of the window.

But for a disciplined sport like badminton, that probably narrowed the focus down to what was more in keeping with their likely aficionados, giving it glamour, without taking away from the sport. Team dug-outs, for example, were a great innovation, says Vankina, as it helped audiences connect more with the team. “The format was spectator friendly, people were excited”, she says.

But the biggest addition was the close collaboration between Chadha and the national coach Pullela Gopichand. The coach was able to chip in with his perspective of the players’ requirements, and was instrumental bringing the overseas badminton fraternity on board. In fact, on the request of one of India’s top players, the tournament was postponed by two months from its June schedule.

Bigger, Snazzier Next Year

It is tempting to ask how the IBL will benefit Indian badminton as a whole. The fact is that if it weren’t for the steady string of good performances returned by the players over the last year, “we wouldn’t have been sitting here having this chat”, in Chadha’s words. Seven Indian men feature in the top 50 rankings globally. “Every week some news would come about India doing well. If it was not Saina, it was Sindhu winning a bronze at the Worlds’, or Srikanth K, winning the Thailand open”, he says. Pradeep Gandhe, vice president of the Badminton Association of India, and himself a former international player, explains that for any sport to get a mass following it needs a mass following. Indian badminton had just reached that ripe level of critical mass, which the League could feed on.

But Gopichand says that the experience of the league will make his job easier. “It helps having our players on the same courts with the top players globally, in do or die situations and having to perform in front of huge crowds”.

Next year, the event will be bigger, and perhaps, snazzier. Two additional franchises will be up on offer, and matches will be on a home and away basis, which will automatically double the number of matches played, as well as the duration of the event. Coach Gopichand says that cameras for line-calls and appeals like in tennis and cricket should be introduced. More entertainment, perhaps. What can be reasonably said is that it will be a cakewalk compared to the efforts of year one.

Courtesy :  Written by Abraham C. Mathews (matabrahamc@gmail.com ), this story was originally published on Business World site. 

You can read original story here : How IBL Managed To Strike Gold Against All Odds