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India too poor to bid for Olympics: sports minister

Reuters — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:59:00 GMT

New Delhi: India’s hopes of hosting an Olympics in the near future was dealt a blow by the sports minister Manohar Singh Gill, who said the country was far too poor to even consider the idea.

India will stage the Commonwealth Games next year and the country’s Olympic association IOA chief Suresh Kalmadi had said India would bid for the 2020 Summer Games after the successful delivery of the New Delhi event.

“I am not sure if India should be thinking of the Olympics. Look at the poverty here,” Gill told the parliament.

“Some of our colleagues (in Parliament) and people outside casually say we should be bidding for the Olympics... I don’t think so,” Gill told the country’s lawmakers, according to Thursday’s Hindustan Times.

“China spent $50 billion for the Beijing Olympics. Are you ready to spend that much?”

India, a nation of 1.2 billion, has the second fastest growing economy after China and see the Commonwealth Games in October next year as an opportunity to show off New Delhi as a major global destination.

India doubled its Commonwealth Games budget to $344 million and Gill told the Upper House that the estimated cost of training and competition venues alone was Rs41 billion (approx $888.5 million).

Organizers came under heavy criticism following delays in the completion of infrastructure, leading to the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) expressing dissatisfaction at the tardy progress of work.

Roger Federer crushes Murray to end year on top

Reuters — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:31:00 GMT

London: Roger Federer rebounded from a poor start to crush Andy Murray at the ATP World Tour Finals on Tuesday, claiming a 3-6 6-3 6-1 victory that ensures he will end the year as the world’s top ranked player for a fifth time.

His second round-robin victory at the season-ending showpiece in London’s space-age O2 Arena means Rafael Nadal can no longer prevent the Swiss joining Pete Sampras and Jimmy Connors as the only players to finish a year as number one five times or more since rankings were introduced in 1973.

It was not vintage Federer, especially in an error-strewn first set, but the 15-times grand slam champion dominated from then on, swarming all over a weary-looking Murray after breaking in the middle of the second set.

From 0-1 down in the third set Federer turned up the power on his forehand and romped through the next six games, treating the capacity 17,500 to some flashes of brilliance that make him one of the greatest attractions in world sport.

Federer, who had lost to Murray on six of their previous nine encounters, will face Juan Martin del Potro, the man who stunned him in the US Open final in September, on Thursday with his semi-final place still not secured.

Del Potro’s 6-4 3-6 7-6 victory over Spain’s Fernando Verdasco earlier in day meant that all four players in Group A could still reach the semi-finals.

“I felt nervous because if I lost, I go home,” the 21-year-old Del Potro, who hopes to have Argentina striker Carlos Tevez watching against world number one Federer, told reporters.

“It was important, the victory today, to get confidence. I hope play my best tennis against Roger.”

BCCI finds no takers for team sponsorship

Priyanka Mehra — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:30:00 GMT

New Delhi: It’s akin to a match being called off without a ball being bowled.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the richest sporting body in the country, may have overestimated the price companies are willing to pay to get their name on the uniforms of Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni when playing for the country.

The board has been forced to indefinitely postpone the meeting of its marketing committee scheduled for 24 November to decide the next sponsor of the national cricket team, after there were no bidders for the rights, estimated at around Rs800 crore.

“The meeting for the tender opening for team sponsorship rights for the period January 2010 till December 2013 has been postponed,” said Sauravh Kachroo, administrative officer, media committee, BCCI. Kachroo declined to comment on the reason for this but added that the decision had been taken by the board’s secretary, N. Srinivasan.

Srinivasan declined to comment on the meeting, and said: “We still have to work on some details. We will evaluate the bids received on the 25th (of November).”

A BCCI member admitted that the poor response from potential sponsors has left the board with little choice but to keep the bidding window open. He did not want to be identified as he’s not authorized to speak to the media.

The surprise waning of interest in national team sponsorship comes at a time when data indicates that the Indian Premier League, BCCI’s popular Twenty20 league, has gained at the expense of other forms of the game. IPL, which is played by clubs, received 40% of the estimated Rs1,200 crore advertising revenue devoted to sports this year, according to media buying agency GroupM India Pvt. Ltd. That has put the squeeze on other cricketing events such as the Champion’s League, the Champion’s Trophy and the Twenty20 World Cup, which have all suffered. Their television viewership, too, has declined.

With Sahara India Pariwar’s four-year sponsorship contract coming to an end on 31 December, BCCI had issued a tender earlier this month inviting interested firms to submit their bids between 2 November and 24 November.

With BCCI expecting Rs3-3.5 crore for each of the approximately 240 matches to be played in the next four years, advertisers expect to have to pay as much as Rs700-800 crore for the rights, compared with the Rs313 crore that Sahara bid in 2005.

BCCI had earlier told Mint that it was expecting a minimum bid of Rs400 crore for the next four years, but an executive from Sahara pointed out, speaking on condition of anonymity, that the eventual payout is likely to be much higher. That’s because the contract is signed for a certain number of matches and the sponsor ends up paying more if the team plays more matches.

“The number of cricket matches have gone up. We bid Rs313 crore for the rights, but more matches were added and we ended up paying Rs435 crore at the end of four years,” he said. “Even though BCCI is saying there will be 120-170 matches, the cricket calendar is booked for at least 240 matches.”

Advertisers are not willing to play ball.

“Yesterday (Sunday) was the last day for companies to submit their bids to BCCI, but I don’t think anyone even picked up a bid because of the high sponsorship fees attached,” said a senior executive at a telco who spoke on condition of anonymity. The telco had initially expressed interest in acquiring the rights when BCCI issued the tender, but the asking price attached forced the company to pull out.

Mint has learnt that companies such as Bharti Airtel Ltd, Samsung India Electronics Pvt. Ltd, LG Electronics India Pvt. Ltd, Nike India Pvt. Ltd, Coca-Cola India and PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd have decided to not bid for the rights.

“It’s too expensive and we don’t know if it’s worth Rs800 crore,” said a PepsiCo executive who did not want to be identified.

“Everyone is pulling out because it is too expensive,” added a senior executive from Coca-Cola who, too, did not want to be identified.

Even Sahara, which has sponsored the team since the beginning of this decade, isn’t willing to pay what BCCI expects. “If the BCCI expects Rs800 crore, we are not in,” said the Sahara executive.

priyanka.m@livemint.com

BMW signs up as London 2012 Olympic sponsor

Reuters — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:16:00 GMT

London: BMW has signed up as the latest top-tier domestic sponsor of the 2012 London Olympics.

The German carmaker was unveiled Wednesday as the official automotive sponsor of the games in a deal worth an estimated £40 million ($67 million) in cash and services.

London organizers said BMW will provide about 4,000 vehicles to transport athletes, officials and other members of the Olympic community.

BMW becomes the seventh top-level sponsor and 24th overall of the games.

The deal brings London’s total revenues so far from domestic sponsors to nearly 600 million pounds ($1 billion). The overall target is 700 million pounds ($1.17 billion).

Daimler, Abu Dhabi fund to buy Brawn

Alex Duff and Vivian Salama / Bloomberg — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:07:00 GMT

Madrid: Car maker Daimler AG and Abu Dhabi fund Aabar Investments PJSC are paying around £110 million (around Rs850 crore) to buy Brawn Grand Prix, whose driver Jenson Button won this year’s Formula One championship.

Right formula: Daimler’s CEO Dieter Zetsche (left) talks to Brawn Grand Prix team manager Ross Brawn in this 1 November photo. Gero Breloer / AP

Daimler took a 45.1% stake and Aabar 30% in the team that will be known as Mercedes Grand Prix, the fund said in a statement on Monday. Ross Brawn, the Brackley, England- based team’s manager retains a shareholding.

The German company will sell its 40% stake in the McLaren team over two years, the car maker’s chief executive officer Dieter Zetsche said in a conference call on Monday. Daimler will use the team to promote its Mercedes-Benz brand, while Aabar sees Brawn as a way to market Abu Dhabi for more than its oil reserves.

“The Brawn team provides an excellent platform,” Zetsche told reporters. “Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz unit couldn’t pursue its goals in Formula One as well with McLaren because it was too focused on promoting a sports car business,” Zetsche added.

Brawn, who helped Michael Schumacher win a record seven Formula One titles as a technical director, led the team named after him to success after overseeing a management buyout of Honda Motor Co.’s team. He will remain the Mercedes team manager, the Aabar statement said.

We’re talking about almost £110 million to hold Brawn, Aabar chairman Khadem Abdulla Al-Qubaisi said in a telephone interview.

The senior management group will remain in place, Brawn said in the statement. “We are honoured to be representing such a prestigious brand as Mercedes-Benz.”

Daimler is switching teams after Honda, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG and Toyota Motor Corp. quit Formula One last year on slumping sales. Mercedes will continue to provide engines to McLaren until 2015, Zetsche said.

Al-Qubaisi said its stake in Brawn will help promote Abu Dhabi, which held its first Formula One race on 1 November.

“It is a very low-cost team,” Al-Qubaisi said, adding that the Aabar fund was in general representing the government in the deal.

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Left behind: the lopsided rule of arm-wrestling

Samanth Subramanian — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:19:00 GMT

New Delhi: All is right with Indian arm-wrestling. And that’s a problem.

To the uneducated eye, both of Sandeep Dhama’s arms look equally beefy. With his right hand, he can—and does—beat down nearly every contender on the arm-wrestling table, set at one end of the crowded, tube-lit Power Maniac gym. But nature constructed Dhama to be a left-hander. “That’s the arm that is more powerful,” he says. “But I can’t compete in the national championships left-handed, so I have to play with my right.”

Power struggle: Sandeep Dhama (left) and another arm-wrestler Devender Kumar wrestle it out at the Power Maniac gym while Dhama’s coach Laxman Bhandari (middle, wearing pink shirt) looks on. Sanjay Arora / Mint

More than 30 years after the Indian Armwrestling Federation (IAF) registered itself and began to hold tournaments, left-handers remain outside the heat of competitive arm-wrestling, forced to either switch arms or give up the sport altogether. One reason, says Dhama’s coach Laxman Bhandari, a former national medallist himself, is that too few show up to hold meaningful contests. But left-handers also need specially constructed tables, with elbow-pads and supports placed in different symmetries. Tables cost money—Rs2,500-3,000 for the most basic model—and for a sport still not recognized by the government, it is cheaper to convert left-handers into right-handers.

National tournaments notwithstanding, arm-wrestling in India still carries the whiff of the schoolyard with it. “I can set up a table here right now,” Bhandari says, indicating the side of the road, “and you’ll see the crowd that will collect.” At the evening sessions at Power Maniac, every bout attracts a tight knot of absorbed onlookers. The serious amateurs largely fund their own trips to championships, train as best as they can, and wait for arm-wrestling to be deemed a sport.

When that will happen is open to debate; Bhandari pins his hopes on a forthcoming November meeting of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). But the process has not been helped by a recent split in IAF. One faction is based in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh, and one of its officials, Manoj Nayar, claims that last year, a court in Kolkata gave it the right to be registered as the “Indian Armwrestling Federation”.

“We’re the ones who were awarded the records from the last 30 years and the original registration document,” Nayar says. It is to this body that Bhandari, general secretary of the Armwrestling Association of Delhi, belongs.

The other faction is based, for all intents and purposes, out of the offices of its honorary president Tom Vadakkan, secretary of the All India Congress Committee—not perhaps the first person to come to mind where arm-wrestling is concerned, although certainly one who has conducted single-handed battle against opponents on television.

Vadakkan received the request to be president six months ago. “It’s a game for everybody, because it doesn’t require much infrastructure,” he says.

“It only needs the aam aadmi ka haath (the common man’s hand).” Then, alive to the symbolism of that statement, he hastens to add: “Not that I mean it politically.” Vadakkan insists that his IAF is the authentic one: “One has to look at which body represents more people, and who is sending more people to competitions.”

By that count, Nayar’s IAF claims to possess a slim upper hand. Nayar counts affiliated units in nearly every state, six of them even having been recognized by their state’s Olympic associations.

Scraping together sufficient funds, this IAF also sent seven contestants to the world championships in Venice in September, conducted by the sport’s apex body: the World Armwrestling Federation. “We didn’t win any medals,” Bhandari admits.

“But that’s because our medal prospects couldn’t find the money to go.”

On the other hand, Vadakkan’s IAF registered a bronze medal at a smaller meet held in Egypt last month. Faijaz V.P., a security officer employed with—and sponsored by—Air Arabia, lives in Goa, and competes in the 86kg weight category; in Egypt, he lost narrowly to an American arm-wrestler. He tries to train exactly as Sylvester Stallone did in the classic arm-wrestling movie Over the Top. “I don’t have any partners to train with,” he says. “So I wrestle against my colleague, a state-ranked arm-wrestler. I even allow him to use both hands.”

Which of these two federations survives to run arm-wrestling in India may well be decided by IOA, if and when it recognizes the sport. The heft of Nayar’s IAF will then be pitted against Vadakkan’s political muscle. In the near future, this will be the arm-wrestling bout best worth watching.

samanth.s@livemint.com

MCA takes Rs8 cr cover against match disruptions

Anita Bhoir and Ravi Krishnan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:18:00 GMT

Mumbai: From airline strikes to terror attacks, the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) is leaving nothing to chance as it hosts its first international match in more than two years.

The seventh one-day international between India and Australia at the DY Patil Sports Academy ground, Navi Mumbai, on Wednesday will have insurance cover even against the death of a national leader or a failure of floodlights that may lead to the match’s cancellation.

“The insurance cover includes public liability insurance in case of a bomb explosion at the venue or a possible terrorist attack in and around the vicinity where the match is being played, collapse of the stadium, disability or loss of life caused to any spectator during the match, stampede and lathicharge,” said a senior MCA official, who didn’t want to be named. MCA has insured the match for Rs8 crore, added the same official.

It’s the first time that a cricket association is insuring a match against cancellation owing to such a diverse array of reasons. The match will be covered against cancellation even due to a “civil commotion” or fights erupting between groups of rival supporters. Reena Bhatnagar, deputy general manager (Mumbai region) for the state-owned Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd, which is providing the cover, confirmed that the state-owned insurer was providing the cover, but refused to disclose the premium MCA had paid for the protection.

Cricket match policies are called “one ball bowled” policies and lapse after even one ball is bowled in a match.

Mumbai was witness to a horrific terrorist attack on 26 November last year, which resulted in the cancellation of two matches of an India-England cricket series and another series of international club matches for which the city was one of the hosts.

Hosting an international match is the biggest revenue earner for a state cricket association. Apart from the money it receives from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the association earns revenue from ticket sales, in-stadia advertising and sales of corporate hospitality boxes.

There are at least 23 cities in India that can host a one-day international that typically draws the maximum crowds.

BCCI has a rotation policy, which means that a city is lucky to get to host one match in 18 months, depending on how the Indian cricket team’s calendar is skewed towards home matches.

This is the first one-day international that the 60,000-capacity DY Patil stadium is hosting although it has been the venue for the Indian Premier League (IPL) clashes. The Wankhede stadium, the traditional Mumbai ground for international matches, is being refurbished for the 2011 cricket World Cup.

While BCCI gets insurance cover for players and the broadcaster, especially against injuries and on overseas trips, it’s the organizing state cricket association that arranges for insurance against match cancellation.

“We just schedule the matches. The rest is the state’s (association) lookout,” said N. Srinivasan, secretary of BCCI.

BCCI lost Rs120 crore due to the cancellation of two matches in the India-England series last year. “The rising instance of airline staff going on strike could affect the availability of players and other match officials, which could delay or affect the match proceedings. Hence we have an insurance cover against that,” added the MCA official cited in the first instance.

In September, some pilots of Jet Airways (India) Ltd struck work, disrupting at least 1,280 flights over five days.

The other new cover is against failure of the floodlights, given the frequent power outages in suburban Mumbai.

The organizers of an IPL domestic Twenty20 (T20) match in Kolkata were embarrassed by a similar problem in May 2008. Play was halted for 31 minutes in a match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Deccan Chargers because floodlights in two of the four towers went out.

In the recent past, Oriental Insurance has provided cover for the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) T20 World Cup account. The state-owned insurer was providing cover to all matches. The insurer also provided the broadcaster for ICC T20 World Cup, ESPN India, cover for loss of revenues due to match cancellations. The television channel was provided insurance to the tune of Rs148 crore.

Oriental’s Bhatnagar said that other state associations got insurance ranging from Rs5-8 crore, while BCCI has taken a Rs60 crore cover for the whole seven-match series in favour of broadcaster Nimbus Communications Ltd.

The series has brought back viewers in droves, especially television audiences, with viewership ratings among the highest in recent times. But with Australia already clinching the series by winning the sixth match in Guwahati on Sunday, it remains to be seen whether the last match will attract a similar crowd in Mumbai.

anita.b@livemint.com

India-Australia series sees viewers return

Priyanka Mehra — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:11:00 GMT

Fast-paced 20-over tournaments may be the new rage in cricket but going by the television ratings garnered by the ongoing India-Australia series, all is not lost for the traditional one-day international formats either.

All eyes: Action during the fifth one-day cricket match being played between India and Australia in Hyderabad on Thursday. Aijaz Rahi / AP

According to the latest viewership data from TAM Media Research Pvt. Ltd, a television audience measurement agency, the first three matches of the ongoing series scored average television rating points (TRPs) of 2.44% on Neo Sports Broadcast Pvt. Ltd’s Neo Cricket and 2.39% on state-owned Prasar Bharti’s Doordarshan channel. These ratings are a whopping 64% and 45% higher than the recently concluded International Cricket Council’s Champions Trophy where the first three matches played had TRPs of 0.86% or the Champions League Twenty20 tournament that followed and received an average rating of 1.32% for the first three games, according to TAM data. (TRPs are the percentage of viewers watching a particular TV programme at a certain time.)

The high viewership has boosted advertiser interest in the tournament, prompting broadcaster Neo Sports to hike advertising rates by 33% for the remaining matches in the series that ends mid-November. “Neo Sports had priced its 10-second spots quite high at Rs3 lakh right from the start, but the good ratings will make them increase it to Rs4 lakh,” said a senior executive from a media buying agency who is involved in the deals.

Although the channel did not comment on whether spot ad rates would be sold at a premium, Abhishek Verma, head, marketing and communication at Neo Sports, said the ratings have helped.

“The viewership rating has increased demand from advertisers with every match—when we started out we had six sponsors but now all eight sponsorship slots are sold out with Airtel DTH and Samsung coming in.”

According to Verma, 85% of the tournament’s inventory for all remaining matches has already been sold. TAM ratings usually come with a week’s lag and two more matches in the seven-match series have since been played. For cricket-heavy advertisers, the ratings come as a relief after a run of bad investments. “Our commitment to cricket is not restricted to a particular tournament but to the sport, but having said that, we are happy that the response to the Indo-Australia series has been stronger than (the response) of previous tournaments this year,” said a spokesperson for Samsung India Electronics Pvt. Ltd, which was also a broadcast sponsor for both Champions Trophy and Champions League.

The TAM data was collated in all cable and satellite television households among viewers aged 4 and above.

priyanka.m@livemint.com

Tendulkar extends ODI run record to 17,000

Sanjay Rajan / Reuters — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:08:00 GMT

Hyderabad: Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar extended his record one-day aggregate to 17,000 runs on Thursday in his 20th season in international cricket.

Tendulkar achieved the mark during the fifth one-day international (ODI) against Australia when he reached seven runs with a three off pace bowler Ben Hilfenhaus past square-leg in his 435th ODI game.

Tendulkar (36), who also holds the records for the most test runs (12,773), test hundreds (42) and one-day hundreds (44), was nine not out.

India were on 24 without loss, chasing 351 for victory and a 3-2 lead in the seven-match series.

Renault to decide F1 future by end-year

Reuters — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:47:00 GMT

Paris: French carmaker Renault said on Thursday it would decide by the end of the year whether to stay in Formula 1 following Toyota’s exit from the sport.

“You will have to be patient,” Renault chief executive Carlos Ghosn told reporters. “We will make an announcement on our participation in Formula 1before the end of the year.”

Toyota announced on Wednesday it was quitting the sport, less than a year after Japanese rivals Honda pulled out and only days since BMW ran its last race.

Sole tyre supplier Bridgestone has also said it will leave at the end of 2010.

Renault won the 2005 and 2006 championships with Fernando Alonso but the Spaniard has now left for rivals Ferrari. Title sponsor ING has also departed, leaving a big hole in its budget.

Singh deals himself in to solve crisis

Liz Mathew — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:45:00 GMT

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has decided to get involved in the effort to get the Capital ready for next year’s Commonwealth Games, seeking to avert a potential national embarrassment on account of shoddy preparations for the country’s biggest sporting event in 27 years.

Playing a hand: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Vipin Kumar / HT

After naming a former civil servant as chief executive officer (CEO) of the Games organizing committee, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on Wednesday seconded two more bureaucrats to the panel, said a senior government official familiar with the development, who didn’t want to be identified.

Jiji Thomson, a joint secretary in the agriculture ministry, and Sudhir Mittal, Punjab government’s resident commissioner in New Delhi, will join CEO Jarnail Singh in the 500-member committee to oversee the preparations.

The government official added that the officials have been asked to firefight to “save the Games”.

Thomson said he had not yet received the order deputing him to the organizaing committee. Mittal couldn’t be contacted. Both Thomson and Mittal have had separate meetings with cabinet secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar in the last two days.

An official in PMO said the apointments had been made in consultation with sports minister M.S. Gill, who had discussed the matter with Suresh Kalmadi, chairman of the Games’ organizing committee.

A second official in PMO said the Prime Minister was “deeply concerned” about preparations for the Games.

Singh was concerned that if the Games prove to be a fiasco because the Capital isn’t ready in time, it would hurt the country’s prestige and damage its image in the eyes of investors, this official added.

Both officials didn’t want to be identified.

The government official mentioned in the first instance said the Centre had considered other options to complete construction of Games facilities and city infrastructure projects that are way behind schedule.

“There was a suggestion to hand it over to the Armed Forces to complete the projects on a war footing, but it was ruled out as the Commonwealth Games is a people’s event and getting the Armed Forces to do it would invite criticism. Another suggestion was to dissolve the existing committee, which was also rejected because it has too many elected representatives,” this official said.

This isn’t the first time that the country’s leadership is stepping in to rescue a sporting event from the risk of disaster. In 1982, then prime minister Indira Gandhi asked her son Rajiv Gandhi, who was then a general secretary of the Congress party, to oversee the organization of the 1982 Asian Games when preparations fell behind schedule. The success of those Games was credited to the organizational ability of Rajiv Gandhi, who became prime minister after his mother’s assassination in 1984.

The Commonwealth Games, scheduled for October, will feature 71 nations and territories that once formed part of the British empire, and will be the biggest multi-sport event to be hosted by India since the Asian Games.

Commonwealth Games Federation head Michael Fennell had sent an urgent letter to the local organizing committee in September citing the lack of progress.

Fennell warned that Delhi faced “an enormous challenge” to be ready for the Games, which will involve 6,000 top-class international athletes competing in 17 sports.

Mint had reported on 29 October that an evaluation by the Comptroller and Auditor General of Delhi’s preparation for the Games found that out of 40 projects, 10 were at high risk and 15 at medium risk of not being completed on time.

Vijay Goel, a member of the organizing committee during whose term as sports minister in the National Democratic Alliance government the Commonwealth Games were allotted to Delhi, is still not hopeful about the smooth conduct of the Games. “I do not think even the Prime Minister’s intervention would make much difference, though it may help in some areas,” he said.

Goel is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Congress, the party’s rival, rules Delhi and heads India’s United Progressive Alliance government.

With time running out, the government may need to spend more money to get infrastructure ready on time, Goel added, citing the risk of projects being awarded without proper procedures being followed and inadequate security arrangements being made.

Toyota to quit Formula One racing: report

Reuters — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:18:00 GMT

Tokyo: Toyota Motor is set to announce its withdrawal from Formula One racing after this year, Japan’s Mainichi newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The world’s largest carmaker will hold a news conference at 0800 GMT in Tokyo on Wednesday with company president Akio Toyoda and team principal Tadashi Yamashina also in attendance.

Toyota’s reported withdrawal comes as the auto industry starts to stabilize following a sales crunch in the wake of the financial crisis.

If confirmed, Toyota’s pullout would be another major blow for Formula One after Japan’s number two carmaker Honda quit the series last December to cut costs.

It would also continue the drain of Japanese companies from motor sport, which has seen Subaru and Suzuki withdraw from the world rallying championship and bike maker Kawasaki scrap its MotoGP team in the grip of a severe market downturn.

Japanese tyremaker Bridgestone announced on Monday they would not renew their supply contract with Formula One after the 2010 season.

In July, Toyota’s Fuji International Speedway circuit gave up the hosting rights for the Japanese Grand Prix in 2010 and beyond to reduce costs amid the global economic downturn.

The pull-out of Japanese companies from F1 began with Honda-backed Super Aguri, who left for financial reasons early last year.

Toyota are the only remaining Japanese team in F1, but have no drivers signed for next season and were dropped as Williams’ engine partner for 2010.

Huge Budget

Toyota have failed to win a race since entering Formula One in 2002 despite an estimated annual budget of around $300 million.

Their departure from the sport would leave just three manufacturers — Ferrari (FIAT), Mercedes and Renault. It would also open the door for BMW-Sauber’s new Swiss owners to take their place as the 13th team on the grid.

Toyota signed the concorde agreement earlier this year committing themselves to F1 until at least 2012, so a pullout could also have legal ramifications.

The Yomiuri newspaper said Toyota had raised its global production plan for the year to March 2010 by 13% to about 7 million vehicles from 6.2 million units forecast in February.

Toyota has forecast an operating loss of ¥750 billion ($8.3 billion) on revenues of ¥16 trillion. It is scheduled to report second-quarter results on Thursday.

Team India set to score high with sponsors

Priyanka Mehra — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:21:00 GMT

New Delhi: The men in blue are unlikely to face any valuation blues when Sahara India Pariwar’s Rs313 crore, four-year contract with the Indian cricket team comes to an end next month and the sponsorship rights for the team go up for grabs again.

“We are looking to get a minimum bid of Rs400 crore for the next four years, though the price could go up. It’s difficult give the figure till the bids start coming in,” said Niranjan Shah, board member of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the apex governing body of Indian cricket.

Experts expect the winning bid to eventually exceed BCCI’s expectations. “They (BCCI) will get at least two-and-a-half to three times the amount Sahara paid for the sponsorship,” said Shailendra M. Singh, joint managing director, Percept Ltd, an advertising and entertainment firm.

“BCCI will manage to get between Rs400 and Rs450 crore for the cricket team sponsorship, but I will be surprised if it goes up any more than that because there are only so many companies that can afford to devote more than Rs100 crore a year just for cricket,” said a senior sports media buyer, who requested anonymity.

Sahara is in the race for the sponsorship rights again and is vying with a host of telecom, automobile and consumer durable brands for the title sponsorship of the team, said Singh, whose agency manages the Sahara India Pariwar account. The Sahara spokesperson was not available for comment. Sahara had won the sponsorship deal in 2001 as well, for five years, when it paid Rs100 crore to BCCI.

People familiar with the matter said Vodafone Group Plc., Bharti Airtel Ltd and Hero Honda Motors Ltd have expressed interest in the sponsorship opportunity. While Airtel and Vodafone declined comment, Hero Honda did not respond to calls. “The kind of money going into cricket nowadays has raised the stakes for advertisers,” said Singh.

According to WPP Group Plc.’s media specialist GroupM Media India Pvt. Ltd estimates, cricket advertising will add up to Rs1,200 crore in 2009.

Indian cricket has had ups and downs—getting knocked out early in the World T20 tournament held in the UK on the one hand, and winning a one-day tri series in Sri Lanka on the other. But the team led by Mahendra Singh Dhoni has often tasted success, making it an attractive advertising target.

A victory in Monday’s match against Australia in Mohali, which was being played when this story was written, will probably make India the world’s top ranking cricketing team, according to Dhiraj Malhotra, event manager at the International Cricket Council (ICC). “This is much better than where we were in 2005 when Sahara bid for team sponsorship,” said Malhotra. He said although there were no official ICC rankings till 2006, India’s performance has improved significantly over the years, making the sponsorship deal much sought-after.

BCCI has issued a tender inviting interested firms to put in their bids at the BCCI office in Mumbai between 2 and 24 November, with a basic application fee of Rs5 lakh, confirmed N. Srinivasan, secretary, BCCI. Executives at BCCI said the fee is non-inclusive of the bidding amount. The deal involves sponsorship rights for Team India, including the rights for the men’s team, women’s team and under-19 team.

priyanka.m@livemint.com

Motor racing-Bridgestone to halt F1 tyre supply

Reuters — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:42:00 GMT

Tokyo: Bridgestone Corp will not renew its tyre supply contract for Formula One after the current deal expires at the end of the 2010 season, the Japanese manufacturer said on Monday.

The sole supplier of tyres to the series since 2007, Bridgestone will continue its interest in Formula One next season but wanted to concentrate on new technology and products after that.

“The company has decided to redistribute its resources as part of a changing business strategy,” public relations manager Kaoru Tomizawa told Reuters.

“There has been a change of direction towards further developing areas of the business where demand is greatest and which support the company’s aims.”

Bridgestone’s decision to leave Formula One comes after Japan’s number two carmaker Honda pulled its team out of the sport last December to cut costs.

Subaru and Suzuki subsequently quit the world rallying championship while bike maker Kawasaki scrapped its MotoGP team in the grip of a severe market downturn.

Economic crisis

Bridgestone insisted the global economic crisis was not wholly to blame for its decision.

“It is not mainly the depressed economic situation,” Tomizawa added. “We are looking more at where tyre demand needs to be focused.”

Bridgestone has been supplying tyres to Formula One since 1997 and became the sole provider a year earlier than scheduled when French rival Michelin withdrew after the 2006 season.

“(Our) collaboration with F1 has contributed to increased brand awareness and the recognition of Bridgestone as a leader in the global tyre industry,” the company said in a statement.

“Having achieved these goals, Bridgestone is now poised to take its technological and brand building efforts to the next level.”

Bridgestone said it would try to reassign workers at its Tokyo base but that no decision had been made about possible job cuts as a result of its Formula One exit.

“We still have a year left in F1 so no final decision has been taken on how it will impact the employees,” Tomizawa said.

“But we would like to respect their contribution before deciding about that.”

Bridgestone announced last month it was closing tyre plants in Australia and New Zealand.

Video: Training for the Delhi Half Marathon

Saabira Chaudhuri — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:45:00 GMT

With the Delhi Half Marathon only two days away, Mint pays a visit to a training session at the Siri Fort Sports Complex to chat with marathon participants, understand how they train, and get best advice on pre-marathon dos and don’ts.

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Also Read Countdown: 12 hours to the race

How to train for a half marathon

Why the restaurant biz just isn’t cricket

Rasul Bailay and Priyanka Mehra — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:45:00 GMT

New Delhi: He may be God in cricket-crazy India, but devotees certainly aren’t lining up at his restaurant.

The Mumbai restaurant named after the man many Indians consider to be the best cricketer to have ever set foot on a cricket pitch, Sachin Tendulkar, has closed for business and may well make way for a night club.

Stumped: This lunchtime scene on a weekday at Sourav Ganguly’s restaurant, Sourav’s, in Kolkata reflects its waning popularity. Indranil Bhoumik / Mint

Tendulkar’s, as the restaurant was named, isn’t alone in its fate. In New Delhi, Sehwag Favourites, promoted by a man who still sometimes opens the batting with Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, has also shut down and the cricketer is locked in litigation with his business partner. And former India captain Sourav Ganguly’s restaurant in Kolkata has seen its popularity waning.

Tendulkar did not respond to phone calls and text messages and neither he nor Sanjay Narang, president of Mars Hotels and Restaurants, which is a partner in Tendulkar’s, responded to an email seeking comment. A person familiar with the situation who did not want to be identified said Tendulkar’s could relocate or make way for a night club or a banquet hall.

Clearly, the popularity of cricketers, while making them preferred product endorsers, doesn’t guarantee the success of restaurants that seek to leverage their names. Tendulkar’s closure comes two years after Sachin’s, a café named after the cricket star in Mumbai, was closed following poor response from consumers. “It didn’t end up the way we had expected,” said the same person who told Mint that Tendulkar’s will be relocated. “Commercially it was not a success.” Apart from food—Tendulkar’s favourite recipes—the restaurant named after him sold Tendulkar merchandise, from T-shirts to crockery. Other restaurants named after cricketers followed pretty much the same model. And diners were also expected to flock to these outlets for the possible privilege of catching a glimpse of, chatting up, even breaking bread with their favourite cricketer.

Sehwag too failed with his restaurant and filed a case against his partner and his firm Creative Strides Taste Buds Pvt. Ltd.

“It’s a case of pure cheating. I cannot discuss this any further as the matter is in court,” said Latika Khaneja, director of Collage Sports Management which handles Sehwag’s account.

Taking a cue from these, Franchise India Holdings Ltd, a franchisee management firm, is planning to play down off-spinner Harbhajan Singh’s name when it starts a chain of restaurants called Bhajji Da Dhaba. The Bhajji in the name comes from Singh’s nickname—he has licensed it out to the company—but Gaurav Marya, president of Franchise India, sought to downplay the name.

“We don’t want to limit it to Harbhajan. The name we are using is Bhajji and Bhajji is a generic name for any Sikh. Bhajji is not synonymous with any one person,” said Marya, adding that this would prevent brand fatigue.

Marya said that a direct association with a cricketer creates the sort of hype that may be very difficult to match in terms of service.

“There were far bigger expectations from Sachin’s and Sourav’s (outlets) and they have not lived up to the expectations… People expect a larger-than-life delivery and it doesn’t happen as a restaurant is a restaurant,” he added.

Sports agent Khaneja agreed and said that while celebrity cricketers can provide the initial start a business needs, running a successful restaurant needs more than a name.

“Things wont run on the basis of a name alone—the business model needs to be strong,” she said.

Marya said that Ganguly’s and Tendulkar’s restaurant businesses were not scalable. “A Barista, Costa, or McDonald’s would have a far better management and marketing bandwidth versus a single store,” he said.

Not all culinary ventures of cricketers have failed.

Indian fast bowler Zaheer Khan, who operates ZK’s in Pune, is bullish on the business and plans to add another restaurant in Pune by the middle of next year. Sudhir Mani, his manager, said Khan’s Manna Resorts and Hotels Pvt. Ltd also plans to open outlets in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chandigarh, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

And Ganguly is planning a relaunch.

The restaurant will try to showcase Sourav Ganguly more and add “new dimensions such as a Sourav privilege card”, said Deepak Bahl, an adviser to the business.

The poor showing of restaurants promoted by cricketers sharply contrasts with their continuing popularity as product endorsers—ahead of Bollywood A-listers. The captain of the Indian cricket team, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, topped CelebTrack 2009, a recent study by Percept Talent Management and Hansa Research Group Pvt. Ltd that sought to rank endorsers.

The economics of the Games

Samanth Subramanian and Krish Raghav — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:27:00 GMT

Where there’s a few million dollars of expenditure, there’s usually an economic study pondering how the money was spent. This is particularly true of big-ticket sporting events such as the Olympic or Commonwealth Games. Even as the cost of hosting the Olympics touched a dizzying $40 billion in Beijing last year—more than the entire gross domestic product of Sri Lanka—the literature on the economic effects of such games has grown. Most scholars see only negative economic benefits to hosting these events. From past studies, Mint culls five key conclusions and transplants the benefit of their hindsight into Delhi’s preparations for the Games.

Infrastructure

Delhi Metro Rail Corp. workers give the finishing touches to a tunnel between Jangpura and Lajpat Nagar. Ramesh Pathania / Mint

When Darren McHugh, a Queen’s University scholar, conducted a cost-benefit analysis of the 2010 Winter Olympics to be held in Vancouver, Canada, he made one crucial observation. The infrastructure projects with the heftiest costs were those “that would not have been built without the Olympic bid attempt, and were not otherwise worth building”—white elephants, to use the popular euphemism.

There will be many of these pachyderms roaming Delhi after the Commonwealth Games, says K.T. Ravindran, chairman of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC). He cites one Rs800 crore flyover running “from nowhere to nowhere” along Barapullah Nullah. “That route could have just been managed with proper planning, by reprofiling the streets. In the name of the Games, a lot of projects have pushed for quick clearances and sometimes even bypassed clearances.”

Click here to view a slideshow of the original Games research

A Commonwealth Games fact sheet announces that Delhi will invest Rs26,000 crore in infrastructure. Much of this will go towards the Metro and the airport—expenditure that would have occurred anyway. But of the Rs7,000 crore allotted to stadiums and roads, Ravindran is sceptical. “Many projects were started without our clearance and are therefore illegal,” he says. “And many of the new stadiums will be junked just as the [Indira Gandhi] indoor stadium was junked for 20 years after the 1982 Asian Games.”

Markets

If there are any benefits to be had from hosting a sporting event, one line of reasoning goes, the market will sniff them out. In a paper titled The Financing and Economic Impact of the Olympic Games, economists Brad Humphreys and Andrew Zimbalist recalled the small but perceptible reactions of stock exchanges to Games announcements. After winning the 2004 bid, Athens saw a “short-term, significant increase in overall stock returns”.

The 2010 Commonwealth Games were awarded to Delhi on 13 November 2003, after markets had closed in India. The next day, the Bombay Stock Exchange closed 1.68% lower, pulling construction stocks down with it. On the next two trading days, 15 and 17 November, the Sensex rose 46 and 29 points, respectively, but the movement was then attributed to an “encouraging” mid-year economic review that had just been released. If, as Humphreys and Zimbalist write, “stock markets do not forecast large positive economic impacts flowing from the Olympic Games,” it is perhaps not surprising that they forecast even smaller impacts from the more scaled-down Commonwealth Games.

Urban Renewal

Planned well, such events can regenerate derelict urban localities. The cases of East Manchester, which underwent a dramatic transformation for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, or Barcelona for the 1992 Olympics, are often cited as examples of inner-city renewal that got it right.

New contours: A view of Delhi’s Yamuna Pushta, before and after the slum’s demolition. Images from Google Earth

The pitfalls of ill-judged urban renewal are stark: gentrification, graft, the destruction of public housing, and forced evictions. The last five years have seen exactly that, says Gautam Bhan, an urban planner with the University of California-Berkeley, who has tracked the Commonwealth Games’ effect on Delhi since 2004. There’s been “an unprecedented increase in the degree, frequency and scale of indiscriminate evictions without proper resettlement. We haven’t seen [these] levels of evictions…in the last five years since the Emergency.” Nearly 400,000 people from three large slum clusters (Yamuna Pushta, Nanglamachi and Bhatti mines) have been relocated since 2004.

The problem, Bhan says, is that Delhi has glossed over its “deep, endemic, persistent poverty” and subscribed to an image of a world-class city that isn’t quite right for it. That means gated communities, integrated townships, river promenades, and an expendable urban poor, all fronted with a glass façade. Which is a pity, Bhan notes, because “the Games is a space where you can do, politically and economically, things you cannot do otherwise.”

Tourism

When Lillehammer in Norway hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics, large ski resorts and star hotels were built in preparation; local authorities expected a boom in tourism revenue once the Games ended. The boom never came, as researcher Jon Tiegland found in a 1999 paper titled The Predictions and Realities of the Lillehammer Olympics. Two in five hotels went bankrupt, and the ski resorts, some of which were sold for less than $1, stayed empty.

Gearing up: The lobby of the Ashok Hotel in Delhi. Approximately 30,000 hotel rooms are being added in Delhi to meet the expected tourist boom. Ramesh Pathania / Mint

Approximately 30,000 hotel rooms are now being added to prepare for Delhi’s expected tourist boom; the ministry of tourism’s 2008 annual report predicted 40,000 additional foreign and 60,000 domestic tourists during the Games. “The numbers do stand scrutiny if compared to other Games hosts in the past,” says. P. R. Srinivas, a Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India analyst. “However, I would link it to the aircraft seat availability issues, visa issues…which have an impact on the number of visitors.”

In India’s case, Srinivas notes, the justification for large tourist infrastructure will depend on additional factors; limited available seats on airlines coming into India, for example, could push prices unnaturally high. “Historical indications of Games hosts (Athens, Sydney, Beijing, etc.) seem to indicate a surge of visitors before the Games, a sort of plateau during the Games…and then a sharp drop thereafter, which corrects itself only in a year’s time frame.”

Revenue

In the annals of profitable Games, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics marked a turning of the tide. The Games before 1984 weren’t usually lucrative; Montreal, after hosting the Olympics in 1976, spent the next 20 years in paying off its billion-dollar debt. Los Angeles made $250 million (Rs1,165 crore now) in profit; Seoul, in 1988, made $300 million; Beijing recently announced a slender $16 million margin.

In its 2003 bid document, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) predicted revenues of Rs840 crore and an operating expenditure of Rs635 crore. This August, however, came the news that the Games would be “revenue-neutral”—that its expenditure would exactly equal its revenue. Now both expense and income estimates have ballooned, to Rs1,620 crore and Rs1,708 crore, respectively. (This holds, of course, only for the operating expenditure; it doesn’t factor in the hefty expenses on infrastructure or security, which go into the government’s books.)

Douglas Turco, an associate professor in Drexel University’s sports management programme, and part of a team studying the Commonwealth Games, believes the 2010 Games could yet turn a profit. “The Commonwealth Games, though smaller than the Olympics, provides an attractive platform for sponsors eager to emerge from the global recession,” Turco says. Most of the immediate revenue will accrue to the Commonwealth Games Federation, he acknowledges; “the host economy benefits primarily from visitor spend.”

samanth.s@livemint.com

Australia beat India in one-day thriller

Reuters — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:55:00 GMT

Vadodara: World champions Australia kept their cool in the last over to beat India by four runs in a thrilling one-dayer on Sunday.

The home team, chasing a daunting target of 293, slid to 201 for seven before a plucky eighth-wicket stand of 84 by Harbhajan Singh (49) and Praveen Kumar (40 not out) gave them hope in the opening game of the seven-match series.

India needed nine off the last over from Peter Siddle but the paceman bowled accurately, conceding just four runs and clean bowling Harbhajan.

“It was a pretty good performance until the last six or seven overs of the game,” said Australia captain Ricky Ponting at the prize-giving ceremony.

Kept fighting

“It was a terrific game of cricket in the end and we would have been disappointed had we lost. They kept fighting till the last ball and Harbhajan got them really close.”

Earlier, Ponting (74), man of the match Michael Hussey (73), Tim Paine (50) and Cameron White (51) excelled in Australia’s innings of 292 for eight after the tourists chose to bat first.

Left-hander Gautam Gambhir hit 68 to boost India after Australia had removed Virender Sehwag (13) and Sachin Tendulkar (14) cheaply.

Explosive batsman Yuvraj Singh missed the game with a finger injury but Gambhir put on 64 with skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (34) for the fourth wicket to keep India in the contest.

All-rounder Mitchell Johnson then trapped Gambhir lbw with a yorker and caught and bowled Suresh Raina for nine.

Shane Watson followed up by having Dhoni caught at mid-on before Harbhajan and Praveen came together in a 57-ball stand that gave Australia a mighty scare, especially after clubbing Watson for 20 runs in the penultimate over.

The second game is in Nagpur on Wednesday.

Mallya elected in World Motor Sports Council

PTI — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 07:51:00 GMT

New Delhi: Force India chairman Vijay Mallya, who also heads the Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India (FMSCI), has been elected in the prestigious FIA World Motor Sport Council.

The flamboyant aviation and liquor tycoon was one of the 41 candidates, each gunning for one of the 14 places, and Mallya eventually got the nod for a four-year term on the panel after the poll in Paris yesterday.

The ballot paper mentioned each candidate by name and the results were announced against their name as well, while showing the club/country they represent.

Festive season takes sparkle out of cricket

Priyanka Mehra and Rasul Bailay — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:00:00 GMT

New Delhi: Empty ticket counters, vacant stadiums and rock-bottom television ratings say it all. Cricket fans in India— where the game is supposed to be a religion—have been left cold by the inaugural Champions League, hyped as a billion-dollar sporting spectacle.

“Cape Cobras, who?” was 26-year-old Madhav Krishna’s response to a query about the South African club, one of the 12 teams participating in the two-week tournament that ends on Friday. Krishna, an avid cricket fan otherwise, has given the tournament a complete miss.

Empty stadiums: A 10 October Champions League Twenty20 cricket match between the Otago club players and the Cape Cobras team at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad failed to draw crowds. PTI

“I don’t feel I’m missing anything. Besides, there have been other social obligations such as weddings and Diwali in the last one month,” added Krishna, a clinical counsellor.

An overwhelming majority of India’s cricket fans seem to have done the same and ignored the World Twenty20 (T20) club championship, staying away from the stadiums and switching off the telecast of the tournament in the shortest format of the game, to the disappointment of advertisers.

Television rating points (TRPs) for the first 13 days of the Champions League matches beginning 8 October were an average of 0.67% on ESPN’s Star Sports and Star Cricket channels, according to Audience Measurement and Analytics Ltd, a television audience measurement agency. The data has been collated in cable and satellite homes for viewers in the 15-plus age group.

Compare this with the first 13 days of the inaugural Indian Premier League (IPL) and IPL 2, which attracted five times the TRPs—at 3.6% and 3.3%,respectively.

ESPN paid $975 million (Rs4,553 crore now) for 10-year rights to telecast the event, only to find the inaugural edition had left Indian cricket fans unenthused.

Although two senior executives in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which runs the sport in the country, said average stadium occupancy had not yet been calculated, an executive from the Delhi Daredevils team, one of the three participating domestic clubs from India, conceded that audience response hadn’t met expectations.

“The average stadium occupancy has been around 50% during India matches and about 10% on other days,” said the executive, who didn’t want to be identified.

Hyderabad’s Deccan Chargers and the Royal Challengers Bangalore are the other Indian teams in the tournament.

“Ticket sales have been very low for the Champions League, with nearly 60-70% of the tickets for most matches remaining unsold,” said an official ticketing agent for the tournament, who also didn’t want to be named.

The response of cricket fans from New Delhi has been the coldest.

Just four hours before the semi-final match on Wednesday between two Australian teams—New South Wales Blues and Victorian Bushrangers—the usual buzz was missing outside New Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla stadium, where the ticket counter was deserted.

When a Mint reporter approached the counter, three touts took him aside saying they would sell box tickets worth Rs6,000 at one-third the price.

Aman Jain, 18, who purchased two tickets worth Rs600 each for watching the match with a friend, was keen to sell them for Rs250 each.

“There is hardly any crowd here,” he said. “There’s no excitement in a match without the crowds,” Jain said, adding that he would rather watch the coming India versus Australia match to be played at the same venue later this month.

Even the ticketing outlets have brought the Champions League little business. A cashier at a Connaught Place branch of UCO Bank, a ticketing partner of the Champions League, looked disbelieving when asked about tickets to the semi-final.

“You’re the first person to ask for these tickets—we haven't sold even one so far,” he said.

The cashier, who did not want to be identified as he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the poor response had forced the tournament organizers to take all the tickets back a few days ago.

The story was no different at Café Coffee Day, another ticketing partner that returned its lot of tickets. “We returned 60% of the tickets...to the organizers a day before the match,” said a marketing executive at the coffee chain, who didn’t want to be named.

Broadcaster ESPN Software (India) Pvt. Ltd did not respond to phone calls and emails sent for this story, but disappointed advertisers blame bad timing and poor marketing for the failure of the event.

“The Champions League has been very disappointing. We knew it was a new format and that it would take some time to pick up, but we didn’t expect it to go down so badly,” said Vijay Narayanan, vice-president (marketing) at Havells India Ltd, the on-air and on-ground advertiser for the tournament.

“People are not very familiar with the teams participating in the tournament, so the marketing had to be much stronger to create hype. It has made us realize that not every T20 will walk,” he added.

An executive from a consumer electronics company associated with the event, who didn’t want to be named, said the tournament had been badly timed because it coincided with Diwali festivities when most people are busy with social obligations. “Their plan does not include watching a cricket match on TV or on the grounds,” said the executive.

While the broadcaster hasn’t brought up the issue of compensating advertisers yet, it is pacifying them by suggesting a change of schedule next year so that the tournament doesn’t overlap with the festive season, the same executive said.

BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah, who himself skipped the tournament because of his hectic social schedule around Diwali, said that may not be possible.

“It would be ideal to move the tournament (dates), but it won’t be possible because the cricket calendar is all booked up,” Shah said.

Experts say it will take much more than just a shift of dates to attract cricket fans to the Champions League.

A former executive at sports management firm IMG, who was closely involved with IPL and didn’t want to be named, said ESPN needs to market the event as well as the players better to boost interest in the tournament.

“An average Indian cricket fan is very evolved and has knowledge on every member of the Indian team,” said Darshan M., chief operating officer of Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd, owner of the Deccan Chargers.

“But all of a sudden, the fans are coming across names of international players who they are not familiar with. So they are just losing interest in the game—it’s as simple as that.”

priyanka.m@livemint.com