England cricket is enjoying its best period for 20 years. In a summer without an Olympics or major international football tournament to distract attention, the sport has the media space to set out its stall to a new generation of fans.
The signs are good. Tickets for this summer's Npower Ashes series against Australia have sold out, while a new crop of marketable young stars such as Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen have helped energise the image of the national team. In addition, the audacious introduction of Twenty20 cricket three years ago has been a big hit. Backed by innovative marketing by the game's governing body, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), the Twenty20 broadcast coverage offered by Sky has tapped into latent demand for a game in danger of fading under the shadow of the 10-months-a-year football circus.
This feel-good factor has encouraged three of the game's key commercial partners, Vodafone, NatWest and Npower, to renew their contracts with the ECB in the past few months.
Vodafone's sponsorship of England cricket is worth 拢4m a year. It recently renewed for another four years, taking in the next home Ashes series in 2009. Npower has the rights to home Test match series, for which it pays 拢3m a year, a deal recently renewed until 2007. NatWest, meanwhile, a long-time backer of cricket, pays 拢2m to title sponsor an annual triangular one-day international series.
Lower-level deals
Below these three sit a host of event and partner level sponsors covering both the international and domestic game, including Toyota, Travelex and Red Stripe beer.
The latter has signed a pouring rights deal at Test match grounds, supported by an integrated 拢4.1m trade and consumer campaign, which Red Stripe hopes will maximise its association with the game.
The beer brand is working with the ECB to develop a series of promotions for bars, pubs and off-licences using cricket design-led point-of-sale materials. Advertising is being created by Team Saatchi, off-trade through-the-line and website design developed by Evolving Media, and outdoor event management delivered by Bullet Marketing.
These commercial deals have been signed against a changing television landscape. This summer is the last time any form of live cricket will be seen on terrestrial TV, possibly for a generation. The ECB has sold its entire live broadcast inventory to Sky for 拢220m over four years.
The oxygen of free-to-air terrestrial exposure will be limited to a 45-minute highlights slot on Five, a channel that reaches about 92% of the population.
The possible implications of this decision are wide-ranging, both for the general good of the game and its commercial partners. 'Coming off terrestrial television provides us with a number of marketing challenges,' says ECB commercial director John Perera, who, along with other members of a new-look executive board, inherited the TV deal from the body's former regime .
According to Perera, the ECB receives 75% of its income from television, with the remainder made up of sponsorship and matchday revenues. 'There will be people lost to the game because of losing live terrestrial television,' he says. 'But it was the best available deal for the sport. Sky will do a huge amount for the game outside of its core coverage. What we need to do is to work with the grass-roots'.
However, when a sport alters its broadcast strategy, there is inevitably a change in its economics. Andrew Wildblood, international senior vice-president of sports marketing company IMG/TWI, says that from the governing body's perspective, it was key to ensure that the overall sum was greater than its previous deals. 'The amount Sky has paid will accommodate any shortfall in terms of sponsorship revenues,' he says.
However, the longer-term effect may be less palatable. 'When you put all your eggs in one basket, the next time around it may be the only basket available to you.'
This could mean that the governing body's future negotiating position has been eroded. 'If the BBC were going to be lured back into cricket at any meaningful level, it probably had to be this time,' says Wildblood. 'Next time it will be four years further away from having shown the sport.
Channel 4 is unlikely to be so keen to become involved again.
It will be less easy to lure others in, so the market becomes less competitive.'
Changing audience
Current broadcaster Channel 4's audience hit a high of 5.2m viewers for England's games with the West Indies in 2000. Last season, it attracted 631,000 for the first day of England's first Test against New Zealand.
Sky shared the coverage for the series, attracting 97,000 viewers for the first day of the second Test.
This hit a peak of 334,000 on the fourth day, compared with Channel 4's 955,000 on the corresponding day of the first Test.
Figures such as these signal a new reality for marketers viewing Test cricket as a vehicle for their brands. From next season, the size and shape of the TV audience will change. According to Richard Ames, director of sponsorship research agency TNS Sport, the people watching will be younger and more affluent, but there will be fewer of them. 'What you lose in raw numbers, you gain in quality,' he says. For sponsors, the scale of the impact of this change in audience will depend on their objectives.
Kevin Peake, head of customer marketing for Npower, admits to initial shock at the ECB's TV strategy and is uncertain how the shift to smaller audiences will play for the brand over the longer term. 'We were expecting Sky to get a big slug of the live rights, but had not anticipated the ECB's "brave" move to take cricket off terrestrial altogether,' he says.
Visible rewards
Npower uses cricket as a brand-building tool as it takes on British Gas and Halogen in the domestic power supply market (see case study, page 32). Peake says live television coverage accounts for about half the media value gained by the brand, citing the appearances of Test cricket on news programming as an under-rated source of exposure.
Initially, the company chose to invest in cricket because of the opportunities TV coverage offers for getting the Npower logo seen; it appears on the pitch, the stumps and the boundary rope. 'We couldn't design it better if we tried,' says Peake. 'If you turn on the Premiership, you don't see Barclays on the goalposts or the pitch'.
This level of branding opportunity is due to the flexibility of the ECB when it comes to the needs of its sponsors, according to Matthew Worley, client services director of Octagon, the agency appointed by NatWest to activate its cricket sponsorship.
Cricket's audience matches the profile of some of NatWest's most profitable financial services products, and the bank uses its presence at games to initiate a face-to-face conversation with customers. 'Long summer days are more conducive to experiential marketing than a cold and wet 90 minutes at a rugby or football match,' says Worley. This type of approach broadens the appeal of a sports sponsorship beyond the narrow definition implied by media value figures. 'The media numbers shape the cash value of the rights, but it is the other elements, including hospitality and tickets, that drive the value to the brand,' he adds.
This shift in thinking is reflected in Vodafone's latest deal with the ECB, in which great emphasis is placed on the value of content for use on its 3G mobile networks. 'Getting the live 3G rights is very important to us; our sponsorships are moving in a new direction due to our technology,' says David Wheldon, global director of Vodafone.
Over the course of Vodafone's four-year contract, the way in which cricket is enjoyed by its devotees is likely to change markedly. It was a deal that was negotiated against rapid developments in digital technology, and one that sees a blurring of the lines between sponsor and broadcaster.
Mobile innovation
There is much to be gained on both sides of the table. Governing bodies such as the ECB see opportunities to make more money by repackaging their rights for use across different media. Sport's mobile telecoms sponsors, meanwhile, are well-positioned to take advantage of the growing customer demand to watch sport when and where they choose.
'We offer the only truly mobile medium, which television can never do. At present, it is about downloading and viewing highlights,' says Wheldon.
'By the end of this contract, in 2009, we are highly likely to be able to screen live coverage.' He cites the example of the company's live streaming of this year's Vodafone Derby as a glimpse of the future. It marked the first time live action has been available via mobile.
As the market evolves, the task for sports-rights holders is to warehouse their inventory more effectively. This means being careful to safeguard the investment of their broadcast partners while offering enough to keep the mobile telecoms companies interested. In cricket's case, the question for the ECB is where Sky's rights to screen England matches end and Vodafone's rights to offer live content start.
'They are very separate deals and will remain so,' says Wheldon, dismissing talk of mobile rivalling television as the primary vehicle for sports content. 'We regard the mobile phone as the fourth screen, but most technological introductions have shown that they are additives to television.'
Alex Johnston, partner of Fleming Media Fund, who has advised cricket's world governing body the International Cricket Council (ICC) on its digital rights, says the deals being done by companies in the mobile space are invigorating the sports sponsorship market. 'What we are seeing is telecoms companies behaving like media brands, rather than traditional sponsors.'
This offers mobile companies greater creative licence with which to exploit their rights, adding to the traditional fare of hospitality, on-pack promotions or TV advertising. 'They have a way of bringing their sponsorship to life that other brands don't have in their armoury,' says Johnston.
Time will tell whether cricket is a powerful enough draw to affect consumers' choice of mobile network or even handset. In the meantime, the ECB is using more traditional tactics to whip up enthusiasm for the game. It has been running a promotional tour over the past month under the heading 'Cricket's big summer'. Just how big will depend on the resting place of the Ashes come September.
ESSENTIALS - CRICKET FANS
According to sports marketing agency Octagon, part of IPG, cricket fans are suckers for statistics and really believe the game was better in their day. The company's 'Passion Drivers' research study, identifies three insights that help to define cricket fans:
1. Conversation. This refers to the social interaction around the game. It covers the way fans love talking to each other about the smallest detail, debating the facts and figures and arguing who is the best player.
2. Nostalgia. People love cricket as a result of the childhood memories that the game evokes, such as playing cricket in the park with friends, going to their first game with their father or watching their first Ashes series on TV.
3. Love of the game. It does not necessarily matter who is playing, it is the skills, strategy and intricacies involved in the game that are important. In many respects, the game itself is the hero.
The research also identified three distinct fan types based on their emotional relationship with cricket: Armchair conservatives are primarily differentiated by the importance they place on the TV experience as a 'passion driver'. Time-Out traditionalists treat cricket as a time for personal indulgence and freedom from responsibilities, with escapism as the driver, while immersed socialisers view the game as being about the opportunities for social interaction, with conversation the driver.
CASE STUDY - NPOWER'S CRICKET IN YOUR BACK YARD
Now into its fifth year as title sponsor of domestic Test match cricket, national energy supplier Npower uses its backing of the sport to increase awareness of its brand among a key target audience.
Npower extended its sponsorship for a further two years at the start of 2005, with the additional objective of linking the activity to its offering by bringing it to life in the eyes of consumers, thereby increasing sales, retention and favourability toward the brand.
A campaign was devised to take cricket into the place where consumers use Npower's products: their homes, offices or even schools. The activity - Cricket in Your Back Yard (CIYBY) - offers the prize of a game of cricket against three England players, which takes place in the winner's back yard, whether it be their home, office or school.
In 2004, a tester promotion for the campaign was run in conjunction with the News of The World. Three of the current England cricket team played a match against the winner and his friends in his back garden earlier this year, with the event being covered by Channel 4 and Sky.
This year, the campaign has been expanded. The promotion is appearing on leaflets distributed at cricket grounds during the Test Series and Twenty20 Cup matches, as well as in Npower's customer magazine, Energise, direct marketing activity during July and August, an online campaign and targeted PR initiatives.
All the marketing has the common mechanic of driving customers and potential customers to www.npower.com/cricket, where they can enter the CIYBY promotion. The success of this year's activity will be judged on three basic criteria: the number of entries and resulting sales; favourability toward the brand as a result of it 'doing something for the fans'; and how it brings Npower's products to life via its cricket sponsorship.