ICL snippets

Essel Group-owned Indian Cricket League (ICL) is going all out to promote its latest season, after having had a lacklusture outing in its first version.The BCCI-promoted Indian Premiere League (IPL) had stolen the limelight from ICL in the previous season, despite the fact that the Essel Group was the first to bring the Twenty20 league format, with international stars playing alongside domestic players, to India.For ICL’s second season, starting October 10, the organisers have managed to rope in a few sponsors and have raked in close to Rs 100 crore as advertising revenues.Provogue has come on board ICL as the tournament’s apparel sponsor; Future Group and Airtel have signed on as on-air co-presenting sponsors, while Manikchand Oxyrich is ICL’s bottled water partner. Sources disclose that the incumbent title sponsor Edelweiss is likely to be replaced by a major telecom player. ICL is also expecting to sign on four associate on-ground sponsors, in addition to umpire and hospitality sponsors. The broadcast partners--Zee Sports and Ten Sports--remain unchanged. However, this year, Fun Cinema--a part the Essel group-might also show some of the key matches in theatres.Shariq Patel, senior vicepresident, operations and marketing, ICL, said that post IPL, the bar has been set from the television perspective. “That is more of a marketing challenge,” he noted. During the first season of ICL, the management had a modest promotional budget of Rs 20 crore. This year, it has already spent close to Rs 50 crore. Also, the management has recently built a stadium in Ahmedabad. With this, the league has a total of five stadia.