Afaqs: This season, the Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore have already being a winner when it comes to sale of merchandise. Saumitra Srivastava, Director, Yog Sports, the official merchandise distribution partner for IPL, says, “Teams that are performing well are seeing good sales. Mumbai and Bangalore lead the chart now. However, sales fluctuate with performance.”
As per Srivastava, home teams benefit more as the sales ratio is almost 75:25 among the home team and the visiting team. If Mumbai Indian team reaches the semi final the sales for the same will also go high. A survey report by eBay India, India’s leading e-commerce marketplace, says Mumbai is India’s biggest IPL city on eBay, with the maximum IPL merchandise being bought in Mumbai. Interestingly, southern metropolitan cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai were in the second, third and fourth positions respectively, while Delhi made it to fifth place.
Deepa Thomas, senior manager-pop culture, eBay India, said, “IPL has fans from 170 cities and 11 countries buying merchandise on eBay India. In India, IPL is no longer a metro phenomenon, with Tier-II cities like Tirupur and Bhubaneswar making their debut in the top 10 IPL cities.”
Srivastava said pickup of merchandise could have been much higher with a better pricing strategy. “We have found in smaller cities like Cuttack that expectations of consumers do not match the price at which the merchandise is offered,” he said.
According to industry estimates, team owners will have revenues between Rs 1 crore and Rs 5 crore this season from merchandise sales alone, depending on the popularity of the team.