Branding lessons from IPL teams

The fifteenth edition of Indian Premier League (IPL) threw up a new winner with the debutant team Gujarat Titans hitting it out of the park, or should we say the huge spanking new stadium. In my branding workshops, I often spend time explaining that everything can be branded, products, services, not-for-profit bodies, countries, people and even events/sports. IPL gets a proud place as a brand that has been created and grown in stature in just 15 years. The title sponsor for IPL may have changed every few years but the brand IPL is beyond compare as far as the Indian sports arena is concerned. What about the “brands” of the various teams? Are they all well “branded”? And are there any benefits in applying better branding practices to sports teams? Here is a quick dive into the arena.

If you disregard all the defunct teams, we are left with 10 IPL teams now. They have very predictable names: Mumbai Indians, Rajasthan Royals, Delhi Capitals, Lucknow Super Giants, Chennai Super Kings, Sunrisers Hyderabad, Punjab Kings, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Kolkata Knight Riders (somewhat different) and Gujarat Titans. Interestingly most of them are “city-based” except for three, Rajasthan, Punjab and Gujarat; there seems to be no fixed guideline for including a geo-tag to the name. Yet another interesting trend is that the term “king” or “royal” has been spotted in not less than four team names: Royal Challengers Bangalore, Rajasthan Royals, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Punjab Kings (PBKS). One other observation is, but for RCB and SRH none of the other team brands have any linkage with their owners. RCB is a very clever brand extension of Royal Challenge Whiskey by Diageo (or should we give the credit where it is due, Vijay Mallya); SRH has the owner’s brand (Sun TV) “Sun” embedded in it. I submit these two brands are indeed somewhat different from all the other eight brands for this very reason. They are strongly linked to their parent brand.

Moving from the brand name to the monograms, we see a preponderance of lions: RCB, PBKS, CSK all of them use a lion as their symbol; some even have a lion motif on the uniform. There is a tiger in Delhi Capitals (DC) and an eagle in SRH. KKR uses the helmet of a knight as its symbol. Other brands do not have any distinct symbols. A little surprised that animals like the elephant, cheetah, panther and bear are not to be seen. In the American NBA teams, we can spot bulls, hornets, wolves, bears, bucks, rapt­ors, spurs, hawks, pelicans and more. A similar mena­gerie can be seen in the names of American football teams. Interestingly, in the English Premier League (football) team names, we do not spot animals; however, I should add that many of the team symbols and monograms sport animals of all hues.

Teams can use the colour of their jersey for stronger recognition and fan support. Chelsea FC is blue, Liverpool and Manchester United are red, for instance. In IPL teams we see a surfeit of blue, light, dark and in combination with other colours. Mumbai Indians have a strong blue identity. KKR has multiple colours including purple. Red is very popular with RCB, PBKS, SRH and DC having predominantly red-coloured jerseys. Two team jerseys in my mind stand out for their choice of colour: CSK with its distinctive yellow colour (Nippon Paint, one of their co-sponsors, has even launched a CSK yellow shade) and Rajasthan Royals with its distinct pink, reflecting the colour of the capital of Rajasthan, Jaipur.

All this analysis of the brand identities may have to be seen in the context of media reports on IPL team valuations. Forbes (26 April 2022) says that IPL teams have had their valuation soar over the last decade. From an average valuation of around $67 million in 2009, now the average valuation is $1.04 billion, an astronomical rise unparalleled in any other sport in any country. The most valuable team according to the report is Mumbai Indians (MI) at $1.3 billion; Chennai Super Kings come in second at $1.15 billion. It is to be noted that MI have won the trophy a record five times and CSK are almost there with four wins. The lowest valuation has been ascribed to Gujarat Titans at $0.850 billion. But it is likely these numbers will change after the great show by the Gujarat Titans team this year. The most valuable teams did not have a great IPL 2022 and may see some valuation erosion. But given their phenomenal track record, they are likely to bounce back in 2023.

All this leads us to wonder what role does a brand name, brand identity, brand colour play in the fan base and valuation of a sports team. Obviously, the performance of the team is of ultimate importance. Then comes star power and publicity. But if they get all the brand identity triggers well lined up, they could give an extra nudge to fan involvement and participation. A brand is a story that is being told, so just as in other domains, sports brands too can go in for brand refresh with new identities and new brand colours (for instance, Kings XI Punjab became Punjab Kings in February 2021). IPL is still in its early days unlike EPL or NBA, so we should be ready to see some interesting rejigs and refresh moves. Maybe someone will have an epiphany post reading this article.

The writer is a best-selling author, independent brand strategist and founder, Brand-Building.com, a brand advisory. He can be reached at ambimgp@brand-building.com