OK Tata Bye
Sports, Sportspersons and Platforms
Connecting the Dots.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
You can watch the full video by clicking on the following link.
I am a huge fan of this approach and let me share how the title of this newsletter confirms my faith. When I first writing this issue during the week, I just had the IPL sponsorship announcement and hence I decided to title the piece “OK Tata Bye” (a famous line on most of public road transport vehicles in India). Of course , this was a play on Tata group getting the IPL sponsorship and thus bye-bye to the regular sponsors of Indian Cricket. Then unexpectedly because of Virat’s announcement, we now have an entirely different connotation.
Anyways, let us dive into the newsletter.
DTW
During the Week, BCCI announced Tata as title sponsor of the IPL for the year 2022.
IPL is one of most admired sports league in the world and has been a great attraction for brands in South Asia in general and India in particular. In fact, brands presence during the IPL season is a barometer for the funding status of particular industry whose brands are prominent in ad-breaks during IPL broadcasting. We have seen a tsunami of advertisements from E-commerce, FinTecg, EdTech, Fantasy Leagues and more recently crypto-currencies related platforms featuring prominently during the cricketing tamasha over years that’s also called IPL.
You could read the earlier newsletter on Platforms and Sports ; Sports and Platform Businesses AND Enabling New Forms of Consumer Behaviour
If you would click on the earlier links, you would realise that the platforms have become an integral part of the sports ecosystem. We could further analyse the recent developments through the lens of Changing Nature of Sports, Fans’ Engagement and Sport Content.
Changing Nature of Sports
Platforms have changed the very nature of sports to an online sports or esports.The BigTech platforms have made significant investments in online gaming and Covid19 has accelerated the trend. A cursory glance at major players like Google Stadia, Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony PlayStation Now , Nintendo Switch , Nvidia’s GeForce , Amazon Twitch and Facebook Gaming tells us that the market is already crowded but also shows that the future of sports might be online and on platforms.
According to an interesting report in New York Times on esports,
E-sports is now the fifth-most popular future job among South Korean students, after athletes, doctors, teachers and digital content creators, according to a survey by the Education Ministry last year. It will soon be a part of the Asian Games in 2022.
In 2020, YouTube India announced that YouTuber Ajey Nagar, popularly known as CarryMinati is the top content creator. Nagar, who also topped the chart for the top trending video with his controversial “Youtube Vs Tik Tok: The End”, has over 33 million subscribers. Of course, he had to pull down the video but you could get some ideas from the following reaction video.
Relationship with Fans
Covid19 has made spectators participation almost impossible so fans are being helped by multiple OTT platforms to follow their favourites. Amongst many others, an Indian platform start-up edisn.ai has an AI powered fan engagement & monetization platform with patent pending player recognition technologies to help networks deliver state-of-the-art player recognition, contextual content delivery and social engagement to millions of fans.
The rise of creator economy in sports has three main dimensions- leveraging on fan following for distribution, content curation by crowd sourcing and re-intermediation. We have seen that the sportsperson and their fans are getting connected through new intermediaries thereby creating re-intermediation. Instead of spending money on traditional distribution and financing channels, creator-led direct-to-consumer brands are spending tremendous resources on social media and advertising platform companies like Facebook and Google.
Another emerging trend is highlighted by companies like Pac-12 which has announced a new licensing partnership in USA with blockchain technology company Recur, and artificial intelligence (AI) specialist Veritone. This partnership would produce the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) first ever Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs). This open ups new revenue stream for college athletes who are not allowed to get into professional/monetary contracts during their college days. They can use their Name, Image and Likeness to make money for themselves and thus share in the revenue that universities have been earning for many years.
In India, Female Cricket has signed up with Rario to offer NFT products in future.
Sports Content
Platforms have made big investments in bringing sports to an even larger audience. Live streaming of sporting event has moved from sports network to either network owned platforms like HotStar and even to platforms like Facebook. It is no wonder that HotStar owned by Star Network had to spend more than the failed 600 Million USD bid by Facebook to livestream IPL but still could not prevent Facebook acquiring Digital rights for all ICC events for four years in 2019. Even if not watching on platforms , sports audience uses platforms like Twitter, Instagram as well as live commentary platforms to socially engage with the other fans. It is interesting to see the audiences’ dramatic shift to online platforms for live sports viewing when as per a report 2 out of 5 people watch live sports on mobile and of them at least 75% have watched it on Facebook or related apps. We also have emerging platforms which were conducting virtual events even before Covid19 and thus giving an opportunity to geographically spread out running communities.
Talking about sports content, Aru also completed her first two weeks of content writing internship with Female Cricket- a platform that would talk, spread, share and celebrate the journey of our female cricketers around the world. Over last two weeks, she has written about Books on Women’s Cricket, promising cricketer Richa Ghosh, first female cricketer to Score Century in Gulf Cup against Boys and other interesting topics. Of course, she has been writing about female sports especially cricket in her regular newsletter. You could read more of her work by following the link below.
OTW
Over the Weekend, another big transition happened in Indian Cricket when Virat Kohli announced renunciation of Test Team captaincy after having given up/taken away ODI and T20 leadership. I have had moments when I felt him to abrasive and boorish but he was loved for his passion for the game and the energy he brought to the game both on-field and off-the-field.
Virat is one of the world’s finest athlete and has special relationship with platforms. He is a darling of social media platforms and the combined offer of Virat Kohli & Anushka Sharma i.e. virushka is a major attraction for major brands across platforms. With 179+56= 235 million Instagram followers between them, they command a premium though it may take a hit when he is not leading any team and Anushka has also moved away from regular acting career to focus on production through her Clean Slate Filmz.
Like I’ve said, truly blessed are those who tried to get to know you beneath what meets the eye. You are not perfect and have your flaws but then again when did you ever try to conceal that? What you did was to always stand up for doing the right thing, the harder thing, always! You held on to nothing with greed, not even this position and I know that. Because when one holds on to something so tightly they limit themselves and you, my love, are limitless.
-Anushka Sharma on Virat Kohli leaving test captaincy
If you have not read her full tribute for Virat, here is the link.
Personally over the weekend , we continued with Sankranti festivities with even more food.I absolutely love festivals which remind us of our agrarian roots and bring us closer to nature. Makar Sankranti, for example, is such a clever way of reminding people that there is a transition hence take care of your food and daily routine.
There is a growing threat of Omicron and our best bet is Covid Appropriate Behaviour. Wear Mask. Wash Your Hands. Maintain Distance when in public.
I Love You
Shailendra
OTM
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PS
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