IPL owners are already panicking, at least the two of them. Reports are widely circulating how Vijay Mallya and Shah Rukh Khan are panicking over the performance of their respective teams. While many commentators are debating that they are being too hasty and too trivial about appraising the performance of their teams. Charu Sharma, the ex-CEO of the Royal Challengers is even saying that owners of the IPL teams should be sensitised about what cricket means. But Mahenga is more surprised about their business acumen.
Mahenga is forced to think what their initial plans were. They must have a plan in mind when splurging millions, on how to recoup it back. The manner in which they are panicking it doesn’t seem that they have a plan B in place. Their only plan seems to be dependent on the performance of their teams and that plan is failing. Are all other team owners as well thinking the same. Do they also believe to get their investment back their team has to win the cup. In that case the odds are one of eight. With such odds no businessman will put his money at risk.

Can’t say about Shah Rukh but Mr. Mallya’s business pedigree is such that it is difficult to believe that everything should depend upon team performance. Mahenga believes as you read in a previous post that player auction price was not totally dependent upon player performance. Extrapolating that we can deduce that team value should not be dependent on team performance. In such case poor performance in only the first edition of IPL should not be a reason for such a panic.

In this edition what should be important is creating a fan base. Looking at the history of similar ventures in football, it is the fan base that becomes most important asset of a club team. There are many more factors involved when it comes to make a fan base than just performance. If performance was the only factor then only one team in football leagues would have huge following and others not but as we know that is not the case.

Fan following is one thing that can be leveraged in long run to generate revenue. It is the fans you can sell the T-Shirts to. It will be the fans who will be willing to pay subscription fees. Fans will always be available whenever you feel to get something out of their pockets.

In these respects Kolkatta Night Riders are already succesful in creating a huge fan following. They have massala in form of Shahrukh, cult following through Shoaib and everyone knows how many effigies are burnt over Dada. The panic on part of Shahrukh or any rumours of split between Dada and Shahrukh will only be determinant to the cause for building fan base. Will dada’s fans still support KKR if dada goes. Will KKR still get all the Pakistani support they are getting now if Shoaib and Gul doesn’t play for them.

Hence the point is that instead of panicking over the performance of their respective teams, the owners should concentrate on the plan B, the long run. Getting the fan following was the initial reason that they spent millions on icon players not for performance alone. In the heat of the things some are already loosing sight of the bigger picture.