5 reasons why the IPL is losing its global sheen

3) The nauseating branding

The Supergiants were named after New Rising

If cricket losing its center stage to Bollywood is somewhat tolerable, then what is to make of team owners using their respective teams as a plaster wall to stick their ugly advertisements to promote their brands?

A team’s branding should reflect the team’s culture, the values it embodies, and the singular identities and the cultural tenets of the region that it represents. These should be reflected in the team’s name, logo, and jersey color.

The perfect example could be the team names and logos of Caribbean Premier League which evince their region’s culture. The only team in the IPL that represented its region in the branding was Kochi Tuskers Kerala that utilized the elephants of Kerala in its team branding.

However, Royal Challengers has nothing to do with Bangalore but it represents Royal Challenge, a whisky manufactured by United Spirits Ltd., the ex-chairman of which was Vijay Mallya, the owner of the IPL team.

Sunrisers Hyderabad’s ‘Sunrisers’ stems from Sun Network, the team’s owner. Rising Pune Supergiants’ lengthy odious name is the result of New Rising- lead by Sanjiv Goenka- owning the team. Similarly, Deccan Chargers was named so since Deccan Chronicle owned it.

To top everything off the gaudy, glittery jerseys splattered with a myriad of brand names are nowhere near the modern minimalistic design standards. Hardly any effort seems to have been invested in branding the teams professionally.