Mobile Telephony: It’s Impact on IPL !!!

You must have seen Indian cricket team captain MS Dhoni walking down a caricature aeroplane in an advertisement during IPL 2.0, for a telecom service provider from south India who has just now entered the most congested market, Mumbai,. He talks about how he is in contact with his friends through Facebook at the click of a button on his cell phone when on an overseas tour, how he shares pictures with them in a similar same way.

Imagine you are sitting at the Bull ring (Wanderers stadium, Johannesburg) and discussing about the IPL through social networking sites such as Facebook, Orkut with your friends in the UK, keeping your friends in India who are in there offices, updated about every run scored through micro-blogging on Twitter; and at the same time chatting through gtalk or yahoo messenger with friends in the US who don’t have access to SET MAX. Isn’t it similar to being with your friends in four different continents in real-time? Wouldn’t it be so much fun to be the source of information to your friends at the click of a button on your cell phone? You think I am kidding, right?

I am not. This is the advantage of mobile telephony made possible by the 3 G technology. Mobile telephony is a type of value added service provided by telecom service providers for people to be in constant touch with your friends and peers. Just activate the internet through your GPRS and be online 24*7. You will never miss any information happening around the world if your friends too have there internet accessible and you can have a ball of a time through these facilities. The world isn’t just getting flatter and a smaller but its going digital too. All of it made possible by the mobile technology. 

This is from the perspective of the individual whose world revolves around the ubiquitous cell phone which includes just about everybody now. 

Let us look at what it has done to commerce from the industry point of view. 

Gone are the days when employees in office would call home to ask about the cricket score or get in the corner cabin with a radio and hear the commentary. Now you have the cell phone which has substituted the encyclopedia and gives you update to-the-minute from any part of the world on any topic under the sun. How can cricket not be a part of this in a cricket crazy country? 

Marketers have been quick to understand the impact of the third screen (the first two being TV and PC) and the role played by Screenagers (they are the youngsters who are constantly in front of any of the three screens at any given point of time). What better place to experiment than the carnival of cricket IPL which has been described by some media pundits as ‘Cricketainment’. 

The infamous fake IPL Blogger gained lot of publicity. People visited the Blog through there cell phones. The ‘Miss Bollywood’ contest required viewers to send SMS and vote for their favourite contestant to win. It was a huge success. SMSes were pouring in from India.

Each innings asked a question about the performance of a batsman or bowler or team. The voting had to be done through the IPL website. This was a strategic move since this resulted in viewers visiting the website and also accessing the website through their cell phones. To stimulate the use of cell phones, this was done. They could have just asked to sms their votes but this wasn’t done. 

The ‘predict & win’ contest too was a good marketing tool but unfortunately due to government concern that it encouraged betting, the plan was shelved. It can be started in a different way next year and I am sure that the marketing team led by the maverick marketing genius, Mr. Lalit Modi would find a way out of it. 

The cell phone can be used even as a DTH or IPTV in future as WiMax implementation takes place soon in India. This has to be preceded by infrastructure for broadband and the allocation of 3G spectrum to the service providers. Reliance Communications in planning to show the T20 World cup matches on the cell phone. I am sure it is going to be a huge success 

Widgets could have been used in the cell phone to update the cricket enthusiasts of the IPL scores at a nominal cost. The sporting merchandise which brings in handsome returns to the franchisees should have been easily available on the internet for people to view in the form of screensavers or wallpapers so as to stimulate demand. For some special exclusive items, the option should have been to buy it online from a cell phone only. This would mean that only the affluent people who use the high-end phone would be able to buy it. Thus you could have charged them extra and projected it as a premium brand. 

However there a certain small constraints to mobile telephony: 

1. High cost of 3G enabled cell phones 

2. High cost of accessing the internet on the cell phone 

3. Slow speed of internet access 

High cost of cell phones cannot be down very soon but with 3G being implemented, more and more people will use it and this will result in more volumes of phone being sold. Thus prices of phones will come down. Second constraint too in a similar way will reduce prices as more and more people use mobile telephony. The third constraint is an infrastructural constraint which will be solved as Indian telecom sector grows. If these issues are overcome in the next year, then there will be increase usage of mobile telephony. 

I think IPL and Entertainment on the Big screen and Television is going to drive mobile telephony in the coming months. Mobile telephony is in a nascent stage in India and hence the growth potential is infinite.

Waiting for IPL 3.0, bigger and better!!!