IPL's emotional connect with the youth: Dentsu Study

The IPL this year has been nothing short of Ekta Kapoor's television soap, or so it seemed. It was epic. There was chaos, confusion, blame-game, and controversies ' everything that makes for a good TRP rating. And there was Cricket ' a sport that is next only to God in India. So, it is only but natural that a certain degree of emotional attachment is always in the picture when talking Cricket. It's been a few days now that the IPL is over and done with; in fact even the T20 World Cup has come to an end, but the IPL controversy continues. Anyway, let us not get swayed away into that direction as that's a topic of debate for another day.

Today, let's focus on a survey result. Dentsu reached out to 1200 youngsters (15% females; 85% males), all in the age group of 15-30 years and tried to understand about their engagement levels with the IPL. The survey was sone to understand the reasons behind the emotional connection of youngsters with the IPL. Several questions popped up about ' brand recall, views on IPL spin offs, mediums used to follow IPL and even cheerleaders!

Of course, one of the most powerful driving factor among youth towards a team as well as watching an IPL match is the presence of their favourite player in the team, followed by loyalty for the regional team. One thing that IPL excelled at is creating a lot of buzz among people and it was found that a majority of them discussed IPL with friends, post matches.

There is a lot of debate about the 20-over match format and how it will affect the conventional form of Cricket like a proper 50-over match or a test series. Pundits are afraid that the sheer essence of Cricket is being killed with the introduction of shorter format of the sport. But there are supporting camps too, that believe it will only help in making people follow Cricket more religiously.

Well, the debates are going to go on forever, but what we have in front of us is a result that surely wouldn't sound good for Cricket lovers who support longer forms of the game. As high as 35 percent of the youth interviewed said that the shorter format of IPL is the reason that drives them to watch it. On an average, it takes almost three hours to watch a T20 match whereas a normal ODI takes over seven hours. The second factor is entertainment. Twenty six percent of the youth who were asked said that they watched IPL because of the entertainment quotient it offers. The love for Cricket is just not there anymore, one would imagine then. And you'd be right if you thought like that. Love for Cricket was the reason for a paltry 13 percent youth to watch the IPL.

IPL has seen famous faces from the glamour world doing their bit to, er, add glamour to the event, but thankfully celebrities do not really make much of a difference to a lot of people. Celeb factor features on only ten percent of youth's list. A saddening truth is that more number of people are moving away from Cricket. "I watch IPL for entertainment but if there is a better substitute, then I am ready to switch," was Harsh Kumar's take on the sport, according to Dentsu.

Dentsu went to four cities and collected the data and interestingly, Delhi Daredevils and Mumbai Indians were the two teams that came out tops with maximum fan-following. DD and MI both enjoyed 22 percent fan following while the dreary show put up by Kings XI Punjab placed them lowest down the order with the least following, at 4 percent. Royal Challengers Bangalore and Shah Rukh Khan's Kolkata Knight Riders enjoyed a healthy 16 percent fan following while Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings, Shilpa Shetty-owned Rajasthan Royals and Deccan Chargers managed 9, 6 and 5 percent following respectively.

Even as the teams enjoyed huge responses from the fans, as they took to the pitch, their virtual presence wasn't anything to talk home about. Almost 66 percent people said that they did not even visit their favourite team's website and those who did said that the websites should look attractive and load faster.

A usual habit is to discuss the performance of different players, what they shouldn't have done, or what they should have. Once the match is over, or even while it is on, all of us sitting in front of our TV screens become experts in our own sense. The figures confirm this. About ninety percent of the people discussed IPL matches. Most of the interaction happened between friends on a one to one basis or in groups. Surprisingly, in this age of Web 2.0 and social networking sites, very limited interaction took place on networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

The IPL has a long way to go in terms of marketing and, resulting sales, through the merchandise route. Most people (75%) do not buy the merchandise of their favourite IPL team. The primary reason is that it does not command a loyalty like football's European League which has a much wider appeal. Vaibhav Dua said that he would buy an Arsenal jersey for about Rs 1200, but wouldn't buy a Mumbai Indians t-shirt for Rs 800 as he didn't find a connect.

The IPL is about a lot of matches being played. Since there are too many matches, people prefer to watch the matches featuring their favourite teams, rather than following every match. About 46 percent people said that they watch IPL only when their favourite team is playing while around 30 percent followed every match of the IPL.

Now, this is a hugely interesting result. When television is not available more number of people take to reading newspapers to keep abreast with the IPL as they would want to know the results of a match with expert analyses. A healthy 46 percent is invested in online mediums like YouTube an independent sports websites to keep a tab of the matches. Sounds good for Internet!

The craze for IPL has been falling. Many believe controversies, commercialisation and over the top hype are the reason for the decline in IPL's popularity. More over, the fact that majority of people would only spend upto Rs 500 for enjoying an IPL match means that a considerable section of respondents is not enthusiastic about watching matches in a stadium.

IPL has earned a hefty amount, purely through marketing and advertising modules. However, more than half of the people don't remember the names of brands on jerseys of their favourite teams. The brand recall is, simply put, appalling. The scenario changes completely when it is about advertising through television ads etc. Almost everyone recalls telecom brands that advertised during IPL. The most commonly remembered brands are Vodafone, Kingfisher, Max, Idea, Aircel etc.

Speaking further of brands and marketing, 68.5 percent of the people interviewed said that endorsements of brands by their favourite players or teams do not alter their preferences for a brand. Additionally, hardly 15 percent people take part in contests floated by companies during IPL. Most people find such contests as interruptions in a match. A respondent, Deepti Manohar said, "No, I don't take part in contests. They are just fooling us."

IPL had entered into an exclusive tie-up with MTV for MTV IPL Nights wherein MTV gained exclusive rights to beam the proceedings and happenings of the IPL parties on the channel. However, the Indian audience seem to prefer seeing players perform on field, than on the disco floor. As high as 80 percent people said they did not follow MTV IPL Nights at all and thought that such events distract the players which in turn affect their performance in the sport.

The concept of cheerleaders is new to Cricket. But it has clicked well, and how! 73 percent of the respondents said that they noticed cheerleaders during the IPL. Though 49 precent people said that they did not have any specific cheerleader group preference, 19 percent of the remaining 51 noticed RCB's cheerleaders the most while the least noticed were CSK's cheerleaders.