NEW DELHI | CHANDIGARH: Remember the ‘mera wala blue’ campaign launched by Asian Paints to drum up support for the particular shade of blue to be worn by Mohammad Azharuddin and his men in the 1996 cricket World Cup? Or, Pepsi’s audacious move in 2003 to change the colour of its cola to Team India blue?
That a fizzy drink resembling the colour of kerosene in some states was not a disaster is a testimony to the grip of cricket’s showpiece event on public imagination. Yet, the buzz around this year’s ICC World Cup seems remarkably subdued less than a week before its start. While the money continues to pour in from marketers—an estimated `1,200 crore on last count—there is no clear sign of a World Cup fever catching on yet.
“It doesn't look like an event that has come after four years,” says Future Brands CEO Santosh Desai. Hotels, tour operators and sports goods makers say the return of the prestigious event to the country after 15 years has not had much impact on their business yet.
Restaurants are yet to come up with special menus and multiplexes are yet to announce live screening.“The usual promotional activities run by corporates during the World Cup are missing this time. Both cricket equipment makers and retailers have their fingers crossed,” says Ramesh Kolhi, managing director of Beat All Sports, a leading manufacturer of cricket bats in Jallandhar.
BUT WHY?
Experts site several reasons from political events such as the Egypt uprising and telecom scam to waning popularity of one-day cricket and the sport itself outside the subcontinent to format of the tournament and poor marketing for the lack of excitement.
“The news span of an event in this day and age has become short. That’s an unfortunate reality of our times,” says cricket expert and writer Boria Majumdar. He says the World Cup fever will pick up once the event kicks off on February 19 and will reach its crescendo when India wins the initial matches.
LONG FORMAT
The tournament format, with a long-drawn first round where many matches will be unimportant because four teams from each group will qualify for the knockout stage, gets most of the blame for lack of initial excitement. “You don’t expect people to rush to watch a Kenya-Zimbabwe match: they’re not stupid,” says Majumdar. He suggests having fewer teams to make the event more popular. “To make the game more global, you have to improve it to a different level. You cannot just do it at the level of a showpiece event,” he says.
Future Brands’ Desai says declining interest in cricket in countries like the West Indies is also to blame. “Cricket is not a global sport and is led by one country—India. That’s not good for the game,” he says. Businesses that hoped to capitalise on the World Cup are not happy. If hotels are choc-a-bloc, it is because of peak winter season tourists. Lemon Tree Hotels VP-Operations Rahul Pandit says the World Cup will not contribute significantly to overall revenues for the hotel and travel industry, mainly because the event has not been marketed well enough in other countries.
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