BackChampions League and IPL: Two finals and what a difference
There is a problem with IPL as far as building a long-term fan base is concerned
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Over the weekend, Real Madrid played Atletico de Madrid for the crown of Europe’s best football club and a day later Sunrisers Hyderabad played Royal Challengers Bangalore to win this year’s T20 slugfest in India. The UEFA Champions League is one of sport’s great spectacles. Last year’s final in Berlin had an estimated global TV audience of 180 million in over 100 countries and with 1.8 million on YouTube alone; this year’s number could be higher. The numbers for the IPL finals would be only marginally lower, with last year’s tournament as a whole attracting some 180 million eyeballs.
For all of Virat Kohli’s new-found status as sports’ third most marketable star, the moneys involved in the two finals are hugely different. For its 11th European title Real Madrid will pocket a minimum of $16 million of the total $1.4 billion that the UEFA Champions League, the highest prize money paying competition in the world, will distribute among the 32 teams that qualified. By contrast, as winners Sunrisers will take home about $3 million of the $7 million in total prize money for the IPL 8 tournament.
Interesting as these numbers are, they hardly convey the real difference between the two finals. That was evident to anyone who watched both games and it was best captured in the moment when Antoine Griezmann’s penalty shot in regular time thundered against the bar. There was stunned silence among the Atletico fans at the San Siro and the image of a young girl trying to hold back her sobs as the tears streamed down her face conveyed the raw emotion of the night. It also pointed to the biggest difference with the giggle-fest in Bengaluru where loyalties seemed to be fairly fluid and the emotional connect with the two teams lacked in intensity.
Clearly there is a problem with IPL as far as building a long-term fan base is concerned. The die-hard cricket fan, the one who can reel off Sachin’s stats against the Australian fast bowlers at Perth, isn’t quite the follower of the truncated T20 game, viewing it with the same disdain that football purists reserve for the penalty shoot out. Real Madrid may have won thanks to Cristiano Ronaldo’s precise penalty take, but try convincing the Atletico fans that their team was any worse on the night.
The constant chopping and changing of the franchises and the format whereby teams change from year to year, also prevents fans from building a real connect. As long as that happens, an IPL final will just be an entertaining evening for the sport’s fans rather than the mandatory viewing that a Champion’s league finals is.
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