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LG, Samsung eye cricket sponsorship

Shuchi Bansal

The race for picking up the rights to sponsor the Indian cricket team has gained momentum. Players in the first innings include consumer electronics companies LG Electronics and Samsung India.

Industry sources say Pepsi and Britannia are also among the key contenders.

When contacted, the Bangalore-based foods company, however, maintained that it was not interested in cricket team sponsorship. Speaking to Business Standard, Britannia's head of marketing, Nikhil Sen, said: "We have neither bid nor are we interested in sponsoring the Indian cricket team."

The PepsiCo spokesman was not available for comment. A Samsung official admitted that IMG, which bagged the contract for sponsorship of the Indian cricket team, has been in touch with the company but said, "no decision has been taken as yet."

LG's deputy general manager, Vijay Narayanan, however, said that the company is keen on the cricket team. "We're negotiating as associating the brand with the Indian cricket team has immense possibilities," he said.

IMG expects to sell the rights at the rate of Rs 6 million per Test and Rs 5 million per One-Dayer. To sponsor the team for the next three years beginning July, a company or brand will need to shell out between Rs 700-800 million.

Earlier, industry observers had pegged the figure at over Rs 1 billion, calculated on the basis of 49 One-Day internationals and 14 Test matches per year.

An IMG official, however, said that the price may be lower as the total number of One-Day matches in the first year may not exceed 27 as tours to Sharjah, Singapore and Canada stand cancelled.

IMG, the wholly-owned Indian subsidiary of the $1.3 billion sports marketing company IMG Worldwide, acquired the team sponsorship rights from the Board of Control for Cricket in India recently.

For the last few years, tobacco giant ITC Ltd was the official sponsor of the Indian cricket team, paying nearly Rs 190 million to BCCI every year. Industry sources claim that unable to find a single sponsor, IMG is willing to split the three-year rights.

The benefits for the Indian cricket team sponsor include: the company\brand logo on the left chest pocket of all the players as well as on uniforms for practice sessions, travel bags etc. Among other benefits, the sponsor could use between 3 and 6 members of the team to advertise the sponsorship of the team.

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