Sports Marketing has generally been on the rise in India. While many sports, such as football and kabaddi, are at the forefront of driving this revolution, none has come close to cricket. Cricket is by far the most popular sport in the country, and the IPL is its driving force.
The IPL is not only the biggest franchise event in India; it is also one of the biggest sporting leagues in the world. Besides the money it makes and the incredible riches it has, the IPL also stands out for capturing the fandom of the nation. It is a monstrous entertainment extravaganza whose juggernaut run for 2 months brings unparalleled joy to Indian sports fans.
Due to the existence of such a huge platform, businesses around the country (& world) saw this as a unique opportunity to showcase themselves. The IPL allows sports marketing more uniquely than anything else. Here’s how they do it.
Usually, in marketing, a business has to spend money to acquire a customer. After that, they start investing in it and eventually get the returns. However, in IPL 2025, there is already a set pattern that allows for team buyouts and expansion. Businesses that own franchise teams are earning from their teams’ performance in the tournament.
On top of that, they are using the same platform to make themselves more visible by attending the matches, wearing jerseys or products with logos of their other businesses, and making all their other businesses visible during matches. It works spectacularly simply because of the number of eyeballs on any single IPL match.
Branding Avenues
The match between the Gujarat Titans and the Punjab Kings on 25th March had nearly 20 – 30 crores people watching it only on Jiohotstar. This is further supplemented by the posters and logos of various brands in the stadium. IPL 2025 is, therefore, a hotbed for all businesses to get involved and grow their brand.
IPL is also a great marketing tool for listed companies. Take Sun TV Network, the owner of Sunrisers Hyderabad, or Reliance Industries, the owner of Mumbai Indians, or the Sanjiv Goenka-led RPSG group that owns Lucknow Super Giants, for example. Each of these companies has benefitted tremendously from each season of the tournament, irrespective of the result of their teams.
It not only exposed a lot of their other businesses to the public but also brought a renewed popularity and interest towards the owners.
IPL is closely followed by PKL (Pro Kabaddi League) and ISL (Indian Super League) in the Indian domestic sporting circuit, purely in terms of popularity. However, those tournaments still haven’t captured the imagination, attention, and interest of the Indian public like the IPL has. Therefore, IPL 2025 further calls for bigger, grandeur collaborations, like the new Dream 11 advertisement that has roped in Aamir Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Rishabh Pant, Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, and many more stars.
The advertisement is by Dream 11, who had the marketing budget to bring together multiple big stars from Bollywood and the Indian Cricket team. But the rise of Dream 11 could easily be attributed to the popularity of the IPL.
Influencer Marketing
The digitalization of India has also directly corroborated with the IPL 2025. Digital platforms like Hotstar have been leveraged, which recently merged with JioCinema and became Jiohotstar. Owing to the same digital space, IPL could also rope in several social media influencers like Sahiba Bali and use them to expand fan engagement. These influencers have hundreds of thousands of followers, and therefore, when they make short video content with cricketers for the broadcasting channel, it drives more viewers.
Their fans, a lot of whom are non-cricket fans, as well as the hardcore cricket fans, both get glued to the channel, and thereby the IPL. This also benefits the influencer since they post the same video on their channels and their fans watch it. This increases their subscription base. Overall, it is a win-win situation for everyone involved.
Rural Penetration
Cricket commentary has almost always been in English and, for a country like India, in Hindi. IPL followed the same pattern for most of its existence. In recent years, IPL decided to penetrate further into the deeper pockets of India and build a market for itself there. They did so by integrating regional languages into their commentary unit. There’s commentary for IPL available in Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, etc. The IPL 2025 will also maintain the same. Cinema integration and merchandise marketing are also a mainstay of the IPL 2025.
Sports Tourism
Finally, IPL 2025 has boosted a whole department that India was already thriving in – Tourism. There is such a thing called Sports Tourism. In India, IPL is driving the sports tourism sector. Visitors have toured this country many times over the years for its many opulent sites like the Taj Mahal or the Golden Temple, as well as the natural sites like Kaziranga or Jim Corbett National Park.
However, the popularity of the IPL is bringing a whole host of cricket fans to visit the country. Take podcasters Ian Higgins and Simon Perry, the hosts of the cricket podcast The Grade Cricketer, for example. They will be visiting India to do shows amidst the IPL 2025. Many more tourists from around the world are visiting India during the March-April window.
Overall, the IPL has done wonders for not only sports marketing in India but also the general economy around it. Physical stores, new businesses, the rise of homegrown brands, improved digital space, and many other ventures have also profited from the IPL. The IPL 2025 is just an extension of that, and it will continue to grow every year.
