Eyewitness: Cricket’s Black Swan gliding on a Blue Ocean By Aubrey Joachim Sydney, 7th April 2008
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is getting to its half way stage, and by all accounts it has so far lived up to the hype and been the success that it was intended to be. I happened to be in Mumbai on the first weekend of this exciting new cricketing genre when the Mumbai Indians were playing the Royal Challengers from Bangalore at a packed Wankhede Stadium. I could not make it to the game itself – tickets were long gone before I had arrived in the city. However, the excitement was everywhere hotel bars, restaurants and outdoor venues were abuzz. Trading in Mumbai’s usually busy Bandra shopping area must have been at a standstill!
Worthy Gladitorial Contest
The scan of the TV cameras at the ground caught not only the faces of an excited mass of cricket crazy humanity, some of world cricket’s super-stars, scantily clad cheerleaders imported from the US and Bollywood’s famous faces but also the who’s who of India’s – and the world’s – Billionaires Club! Of course, the game being played was between Mukesh Ambani’s team and Dr Vijay Mallya’s team. They had taken time off their board rooms to indulge in a fast growing pleasure for the rich and famous – watching their respective cricket teams battle each other in a sporting contest. This is what it would have been like in the heyday of the Roman Empire when the Emperor sat in his box in the coliseum watching his slaves take on each other in gladiatorial contests. The analogy is stunningly similar!
To the business high rollers in their boxes, I wondered what would have been more adrenalin generating – Sanath Jayasuriya thrashing the bowlers to the boundary or, sealing a merger or acquisition in the board room. I even wonder how many business deals are completed within the span of a Twenty20 game. Until now, golf was the sport that was associated with business deals. It will not be long before the bat and ball game takes over. These are the sorts of comparisons that can now be talked of in cricketing circles. This is the sort of discussion and debate that can now be entertained on a cricket website. The game of cricket has become a multi-dimensional platform attracting and serving a myriad of stakeholders from bat wielding street urchins to pin striped businessmen in board rooms.
Modi the Strategist
I am not sure which business school Lalit Modi went to, but the vice-president of the BCCI must have at some point picked up some reading material from airport book stores during his many travels. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne’s international bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy is about how to create market space and make the competition irrelevant. They use the example of the now world famous Cirque du Soieil, Canada’s largest cultural export, which was created in 1984 by bringing together the fun, entertainment and excitement of the circus and the seriousness of traditional theatre to attract a whole new audience in an uncontested market space.
In less than 20 years it achieved levels of revenues that took global champions of the circus industry more than one hundred years to achieve! Lalit Modi has surely learnt his strategy lessons well. He has discovered a blue ocean of uncontested market space. Starbucks is also a successful outcome of blue ocean thinking.
Market potential: Unlimited
What then are the success factors of this new cricketing genre? By the time the curtain has fallen on the first IPL tournament 2.5 million fans would have attended the games and several billion would have watched the games on television across the globe.
The audience mix cuts across a demographic that has never been possible before. The young, the old, the males the females the economically wealthy and those who are not, the time rich and the time poor and what’s more, it transcends all language and national barriers both on and off the field. The ingredients that have come together have never been blended before. Sport, business and entertainment. Sachin Tendulkar, Mukesh Ambani and Shah Rukh Khan. Shane Warne, Lachlan Murdoch and Preity Zinta. The marketing potential is unfathomable. One cannot also leave out another major factor - the economic tsunami of India itself.
Refreshing Media Coverage
What makes the Twenty20 concept in cricket so very different from league football is not only the combination of song and dance of Bollywood stars but more that it is attracting a proportionately larger female audience. And, I do not think they are attracted only because ‘King’ Kahn himself tantalizes the crowd with his gyrations before the games of his Kolkata Tigers!
Many of the TV anchors and ground roaming presenters are female who are not only demonstrating a superior knowledge and understanding of the game but adding an interesting slant when they interview the cricketers. They ask the questions that the guys just don’t think of. This is a welcome change from retired male cricketers poking keys into cracks on a playing surface or merely focusing on the technical issues. These lasses really bring a game to life. This is reality TV at its best.
So what of the many naysayers. The CEO’s of both Cricket Australia (CA) and the England and Wales Cricket Board (EWCB) recently commented that they could not see the long term success of the franchised game and that the traditional game will prevail. They predicted that the financial sustainability of the business model was weak. Yet they preside over organizations that are smaller than the sums paid out to acquire each of the IPL franchises. Their comments come despite a survey indicating that a large proportion of their own players are ready to quit the traditional game in favour of the new form. They face the daunting fact of loosing their talent pool. Their audiences have already long left the stadiums and TV rooms. Therefore one wonders which model is unsustainable in the long run theirs or the IPL?
Taking the risk and succeeding
So while India’s Lalit Modi has passed his strategy paper with flying colours, James Sutherland and his English counterpart have a bit of reading to do on business risk. Another International bestseller perhaps?
Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan explores randomness and risk. At the heart of the author’s thinking is the idea of a ‘Black Swan’ – an unlikely but not impossible catastrophe that no one can plan for, a surprise event that can have dire consequences. Is then the traditional cricketing establishment being confronted by a black swan? It certainly seems like it. What can be done? Little. After all even Wall Street can do little about black swans – who planned for a sub-prime crisis?
So while I see many more franchised leagues taking off in various parts of the globe I also increasingly see a growing following of cricket fans who would never know what all the fuss was about a five day game that ended without a result played by men in dull white uniforms. Just like the generation that have never known vinyl records, bottle openers or telephones with finger inserted dials. Cricket’s black swan is gliding on a blue ocean!
About the author: Aubrey Joachim is a follower of the game and a business consultant. He comments regularly on cricket matters in the media, and wrote this article exclusively for CricketCrowd.com.
