IPL 2024: Is it time to rethink the unsponsored Orange and Purple Cap?

If you paid close attention, it might have also struck you that the orange cap Kohli was awarded was without a sponsor’s logo.

It’s rare for an Indian Premier League sponsorship slot to remain unsold. Well into the first week of IPL 2024, there are two such slots – the Orange & Purple Cap and the Umpire’s partner – which haven’t found any takers yet.

The past two editions brought IPL its best returns from Central sponsorship – between title sponsorship, six Associate sponsors, a strategic timeout sponsor, Orange and Purple Cap sponsor as well as Umpire’s partner, over ₹1000 crore per year were added to the BCCI coffers.

In the ongoing edition, in terms of revenue, the shortfall is close to ₹200 crore. Tata’s continuation as title sponsors for an increased amount ( ₹500 crore per year) as well as lift in Associate sponsorship proceeds from the fantasy gaming segment (My11Circle’s new deal is worth ₹125 crore per year) have prevented a sharp decline in revenue.

In the larger scheme of things with media rights ( ₹9678 crores annually) being primary contributors to the IPL revenue chain, this hurts the BCCI little. What fewer Associate sponsors and unsold categories do mean is poor optics for the BCCI. Particularly when IPL franchises explore new sponsorship avenues from ice cream partners for SRH to water bottle sponsors for RCB.

The two Saudi sponsors – Saudi Tourism and Aramco – who had recently joined the IPL bandwagon haven’t extended their deals. “Some companies prefer not to participate in auctions. Others want real long-term deals such as 10 years,” said an IPL official. According to the official, there could still be a last-minute deal.

RELEVANT ANYMORE?

Evidently though, some of the categories the IPL seeks partners for need an urgent upgrade. The Orange and Purple Cap for example is handed out to the tournament’s highest run-scorer and wicket-taker following each match. When the concept came to being during the first edition in 2008, T20 wasn’t the data driven beast it now is.

Only once in the IPL’s 16-year history has an Orange Cap holder helped a franchise lift the trophy. Even the highest run-scorer in a match can prove detrimental to the team’s interest if the innings has eaten up too many balls across crucial phases in a match. “We absolutely deride these Cap awards as all they do is encourage meaningless individual goals,” said an analyst working with an IPL team.

The right marriage of cricket and commerce would be for the BCCI to find an appropriate data sponsor or a sponsor who ties up with an analytics firm and uses modern data algorithms to judge Impact performances in a T20 match.

In last Sunday’s Gujarat Titans-Mumbai Indians tie, batter Sai Sudharsan was declared Man of the Match for his 39-ball 45. The batter said he was ‘a bit shocked’ as there were ‘too many great contributions in the second innings’. Sudharsan may be referring to Titans pacer Mohit Sharma’s spell (4-0-32-2). Plain numbers didn’t reflect the effectiveness of the spell, but advanced data sets would rate it much higher as it involved Sharma bowling all the difficult overs to set up Titans’ narrow win.

Whether a minimum of ₹60 crore asking price IPL has placed for Orange and Purple Cap partnership and ₹50 crore for Umpire’s partnership is fair value, when so many in the marketplace have the option to strike deals with IPL franchises at a cheaper value is a matter of another debate.