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The recent Howzat Legends League Cricket tournament brought with it a warm feeling for fans nostalgic about the good old days. When you take several legends from cricket, the sport which has a special place in the hearts of millions of fans, the product is sure to be a massive hit. That is exactly what the Howzat Legends League Cricket, a T20 league featuring a cornucopia of cricketing legends, sought to do this year.
Following the enormous success of the first season of the tournament, Sportskeeda caught up with Raman Raheja, co-founder and CEO of Legends League Cricket, for an exclusive interview. Having been involved in the sports and entertainment industry and a part of noteworthy events such as the IPL, Kabaddi World Cup, and World Kabaddi League as founder and CEO, he has seen and done it all.
Speaking about the first season of Legends League Cricket and the rationale behind the decision to host it in Oman, he said:
“One of our objectives at Legends League Cricket has been to promote cricket in lesser-represented markets around the world. We want to showcase cricket in emerging markets that have big potential to grow in future. With the recent ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, Oman presented that opportunity and thus, we are trying to build on that. We shall host the second edition at Oman too as it has a huge potential which couldn’t be fully utilized due to the Omicron wave.”
The inaugural season of Howzat Legends League Cricket delivered stellar viewership figures by reaching a cumulative 703 million fans around the globe. Absolutely ecstatic about the response generated, Raman commented:
“(The global reach) absolutely surpassed our expectations. With so much cricket in recent times and the Omicron wave hovering around the world, we had assumed the numbers to be around 300 million, but this has been massive.”
Delving deeper into the success of the first season of Legends League Cricket, Raman attributed his good fortune to the brand of competitive, clean, and fair cricket played, the huge fan following of the legends participating, and world-class production. Speaking from the perspective of the fans, he added:
“Any cricket fan would love to see their favourite players back on the field even if they are not as active. That was an attraction, but to retain the audience, quality and competitiveness of cricket is the only way. We were able to do both things right.”
Star power contributed heavily to the success of Legends League Cricket
The success of any sporting property is ultimately dependent not only on the product itself and the way it is packaged, but also on the marketing and fan engagement strategy. To that end, Howzat Legends League Cricket signed Amitabh Bachchan as the brand ambassador for the first season of the cricketing extravaganza.
Speaking about working with the Bollywood icon as part of the strategy to promote Howzat Legends League Cricket, Raman commented:
“The key objective for us was to create an impact amongst the cricket fans. Given that we were operating in the “Legends” space, we had to present ourselves through a face who is a direct representation of a “Legend” in all aspects.”
“Having Mr. Bachchan as our face clearly established that part, as he stands tall as a true “Legend” and also cuts across all age groups and audiences. In fact, taking a non-cricketing face as our ambassador was a disruptive way to reach out to the audience across genres.”
As any digital marketer can attest, reaching a cumulative audience of 703 million people and the level of engagement that Legends League Cricket saw in its first season itself requires a coordinated, well-executed digital strategy. Acknowledging the same, Raman attested:
“We wanted to literally own the word “Legend” in the sports genre on social and digital platforms. We created and promoted our content accordingly across the world and the result was that we were trending on that keyword on Google.”
The tournament included former Indian men’s national cricket team coach Ravi Shastri as the league commissioner and featured fan-favorite cricketers from the past, including Kevin Pietersen, Muttiah Muralitharan, Tillakaratne Dilshan, and Brett Lee, among others.
The players themselves were some of the Legend League’s best assets to market it across the board. Rounding up the overall fan engagement blueprint by touching on how the iconic players were leveraged, Raman said:
“We had a direct fan base of more than 300 million through the social media followers of our 59 cricket legends (players). That was the primary market for us to address, and we used that effectively with most of the cricketers, by using their social handles to either talk about the league, matches, city, or multiple other things. That was the trigger for the high reach for us.”
Challenges (pandemic-induced and otherwise)
Ultimately, the final product that fans see on the ground or on television is something that has been created after months of working around innumerable challenges. Reflecting on some of the obstacles tackled along the way, Raman commented:
“Covid has been the single biggest challenge. We lost out on some of the biggest players like Sehwag, Harbhajan, Ashish Nehra to the Omicron wave. We can't really fight that as safety and health of players is of utmost importance.”
Any sport with a high level of competitiveness needs a competent support staff to prevent and treat injuries. Noting the performance of the sports science team, Raman added:
“The fitness of players to produce competitive cricket was another big challenge. We had Andrew Leipus, Director of Sports Science at LLC, and his team working actively to ensure that the players were fit enough to produce good cricket on field.”
To generate a successful product, in this case a sporting property, it can also be essential to understand some of its limitations and plan accordingly. On this note, Raman said:
“We can never be seen as competitors to active cricket, but with so much of that happening, we had to ensure that we got a brief clean window to launch the season. Thus, we preponed the league to January instead of March, when it was originally scheduled to be held. Once established after Season 1, we could be more comfortable to slot it closer to active cricket too.”
The first season of the nostalgia-inducing cricket tournament had earlier seen Sony pick up the media rights. Additionally, while fantasy gaming platform Howzat had signed on as title sponsor, other notable partnerships for the first season of Legends League Cricket included the likes of My FM Radio as Radio Partner in 29 Indian cities, and Rario as Official Digital Collectibles Partner.
In light of the Omnicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Raman noted that while the Howzat Legends League Cricket had not performed up to expectations commercially, this was the first season and that there was no precedence of such a format. On a positive note, he added:
“We already have long term deals to go forward. Now that we are done with Season 1 and have our report card too, we can expect bigger, better and bolder seasons ahead.”
Future roadmap
Bigger and better seasons certainly seem to be on the cards for Legends League Cricket. Speaking of Legend League Cricket's future roadmap, Raman expressed his desire to expand into other markets and sports, which could see them working with other celebrities in future, and signed off by saying:
“We would be taking Legends League Cricket and its variants to emerging markets of the cricketing world. I would like this to be a travelling property around the world with the best bidder to get the hosting rights.”
