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As a reaction to India’s shock exit from the world cup the BCCI are
proposing to clamp down on players advertising and promotional activity
limiting the number of endorsements any player can give to three, and no
product can be endorsed by more than two players.
It’s being seen as a
rather heavy handed, and has predictably raised something of a stink – and it’s
surely only a matter of time before some barrack room lawyer starts talking
about ‘restraint of trade’ and, going down a road that English footballers have
started keenly navigating – ‘image rights’.
You don’t
have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that the main reason we’re hearing
about this now is that the BCCI are coming under immense pressure to take some
action in the wake of India’s early exit from the World Cup. What better explanation could there be than
to blame the players for not being fully focussed on the game and instead
concentrating on lining their own pockets.
Other contributors to ‘Holding
Willey’ are in a better position to comment on the Indian perspective to
all this. My own thought, for what it’s
worth, is that assuming a test side is picked purely on merit, then it’s in the
players’ own interests to ensure that endorsements and advertising deals don’t
affect performance. After all, no
company will want to be associated with a player who is performing below par,
or playing on an unsuccessful team and a player whose mind is on the next
photo-shoot rather than the next innings is not going to stay in the side for
long if performance suffers.
So, how is all this
going down in England? In short, very quietly! It’s hardly made a ripple in the media and
there has been little judgmental comment in favour of one side or the
other.
The level of public
recognition for English cricketers still extraordinarily low compared with India. Even at the peak of cricket interest in England (Trafalgar Square - September 2005) most of the winning eleven could
have walked down the street relatively unmolested and unrecognised. The only exceptions would have been Freddie
Flintoff -who would have been hugely
embarrassed by the whole thing, and the supreme self-publicist Kevin Pietersen
who would have probably had a note pinned on his back saying ‘Molest me,
please’.
Very rarely are cricketers
in England seen on TV promoting products – there just isn’t
the sufficient recognition factor that a marketing department would demand. To
use some marketing speak – the English cricketing ‘brand’ isn’t strong enough. It’s noteworthy
that cricketer most often seen during ad breaks is someone who retired almost
20 years ago – Ian Botham. That’s a
measure how just how big a figure Botham was in his pomp, and how effective his
PR agency is.
If an English cricketer
were told that he was going to be limited to three endorsements his response
would likely be – ‘as many as three - fantastic!’ I’d guess that even some high profile test
players would be lucky to get three advertising offers in their entire career –
let alone three simultaneously.
If a player is seen
advertising in a magazine it’ll most likely be in a cricket one, or maybe a
men’s lifestyle publication like GQ. In
terms of products, it will primarily be cricket equipment, with the occasional
foray into isotonic drinks or generic sports clothing. As an aside, I’d say there might be a
lucrative contract awaiting Steve Harmison with Mothercare based on how he’s
been acting like a big kid since his return home from Down Under – but that’s a
different story.
It’s a different story
in Australia – where, unlike in England, cricket is the sport at the top of the pecking
order. To my eyes as a visitor last
winter, almost every TV ad shown during the recent Ashes series seemed to
feature at least one test player prepared to whore himself to the highest
bidder – and if any product marketer couldn’t persuade Ricky or the boys to get
involved, there was always Richie Benaud who seemed virtually omnipresent on
screen at times.
In terms of an
England/India comparison, a more instructive comparison would be to look at
Indian cricket alongside the English football team. For ‘Tendulkar’ read ‘Beckham’, or possibly
now ‘Rooney’. The cost of players ‘image
rights’ are astronomical – the total value of Beckham’s recent transfer to the
US has been estimated at over a quarter of a billion pounds once the
advertisers and product manufacturers have had their share of the cake.
English footballers
generally have a far higher recognition factor that cricketers– matching Indian
cricketers on the ‘mobbed in the street’ scale.
It’s also instructive to
consider the English football comparison because there are eerie similarities
with what is happening with the Indian cricket squad at the moment. After 2006 World Cup debacle, certain sections
of the media suggested that if they cut down on their advertising deals and
promotional work and concentrated on playing the game it might have helped them
get further than the quarter finals
Beyond the endorsements
issue there was a wider search for scapegoats – some blamed the presence of
wives and girlfriends, others blamed media intrusion, which was rather ironic
considering it, was the media themselves who were doing the scapegoat
hunting! The old chestnut of ‘too much
football’ was also trotted out. Cloistered away in their happy world living in
the lap of luxury the players weren’t concerned at all – as long as they were
still picking up their £100,000 per week pay cheques they didn’t mind who got
the blame.
The truth was that side
were badly prepared, badly managed and didn’t perform up to the sum of their
parts. In India’s case - maybe – just maybe – the same applies and
it wasn’t the deodorant ads that caused them to lose to Bangladesh – they just didn’t play well enough on the day and
were beaten by the better side.
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