Great product, poor packaging

PSL season 8 is already underway with all teams having played at least one match

For the second year running, Pakistan’s premier T20 competition will be completely organised in the country, that too despite the deteriorating law and order situation which is definitely very good news for the fans.

Four cities — Multan, Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore — will host the event which is scheduled to come to an end on March 19 at the Gaddafi Stadium.

This year’s tournament has a new vibe to it. The games seem to be more charged than ever before. The rivalry is taking its due course and it is finally becoming a tournament where there is much more than ‘oh whoever wins, it will be a victory for Pakistan’.

PSL 8, in every sense, was going to be different. After all, it is being organised in a season where there were simultaneously four different leagues played not that long ago.

There was a common perception that this year’s competition might not be able to get the attention that it had in the previous years, largely because of similar competitions going all over the world in the recent past.

There was one league that was talked about to some extent as a potential threat to the PSL and that was the one that just took place in the United Arab Emirates, called the International League T20 (ILT20).

After working in that competition and now getting a chance to work in this, it is clear that PSL’s standard is far above the rest in the business. The only other league that comes close or is better than the PSL is perhaps the Indian Premier League (IPL) but that is no surprise.

They are in the business for much longer than the PSL, they have a much bigger financial resource to back their product and they are catering for a much-bigger market, estimated to be around more than 1.5 billion.

However, despite having budget constraints, security issues and whatnot, PSL has surely made its mark in the world of league cricket and that is no small feat.

Writing it on Friday the 17th of February and we have already witnessed three out of the first four matches ending in the second last or last over.

That’s not it as the world has already witnessed the arrival of a young pace sensation in Ihsanullah who bamboozled Quetta Gladiators in Multan.

Despite all of that, it seems that the PSL is not being marketed the way it should. Many might wonder what basis I have to claim that but there is a strong reason behind it.

During the final of the inaugural edition of the ILT20, the marketing head of the ZEE TV Network, who is the official broadcast partner of the newly-started league, stated in his short commentary stint, that the competition has already gathered more than 250 million views in 30 days, and that too just in India.

He was clearly over the moon and why not? Those numbers were staggering to say the least, considering the league was taking place in pretty much empty stadiums, the quality of cricket was sub-par and there were hardly any close matches for the crowd to be attracted towards.

So how does the inaugural edition of the ILT20 manage to get so many eyeballs, just in India? And the answer was through good packaging.

To understand the value of the local audience, ZEE had three different feeds going simultaneously, one in English (the World feed that was being delivered to different parts of the world), one in Hindi and another in Tamil.

Those two feeds were just available for the local audience. That gave the viewers an opportunity to watch their favourite sport in their own language.

Now if you compare that to what’s happening in the PSL, we just have 10 overs out of the available 40 in the match where viewers in the country can listen to Urdu commentary.

I had an opportunity to discuss with a person who worked very closely with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) about the recent deal secured for the next few editions of the IPL and I was of the point that the deal made no sense. That the numbers don’t add up and so on.

However, he very swiftly explained how the broadcasters will end up making money, and that is by having multiple feeds, enticing local brands to promote their business in front of the targeted audiences.

He went on to explain that the upcoming edition of the IPL will be telecast in 11 different regional languages. 11 different feeds mean 11 ways to attract brands to invest, which means BCCI getting one of the biggest slices in broadcasting rights.

Listening to all of that makes you wonder how and why our decision-makers don’t pay attention to these details but then the answer is very simple, they are more interested in the chair than anything good for the country or for the sport.