The IPL's Season Three promises to be bigger and better, and not just because a UK- based brand evaluation firm has pegged the value of cricket's biggest circus at Rs 18,999 crore ( more than double of what it was last year). When it opens at the D. Y. Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai on Friday evening, the glam quotient of IPL is set to touch a new high.
The entertainment extravaganza takes off with the opening ceremony featuring international performers such as Lionel Richie, Ali Campbell of UB40 and Bjorn Again. Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone will give them company with a troupe of 40 dancers. But there's going to be more to this IPL than dance and music.
Kings XI Punjab has launched an online fan club -the KXIP Lion's Den- and released a series of funny animation films featuring their mascots Rocky and Ranjit ( these will be shown on YouTube and Facebook, and in stadiums as well). Fan club members- as many as 13,322 people have already registered - will enjoy a host of benefits, from hefty discounts on match tickets and merchandise to opportunities to meet and party with the cricketers.
Rajasthan Royals, who lifted the trophy at the inaugural IPL, has come out with two new looks for their player jerseys. For the first time in the history of IPL, a team will have two jerseys, one for home matches ( blue with golden sleeves) and another for those played away from home ( golden with blue sleeves).
The Kolkata Knight Riders, who in the earlier two editions turned out in black and gold jerseys, will now be seen in purple and gold. Team co- owner Shah Rukh Khan said he was hoping the purple jerseys would attract more women fans to his team. 'I'm told girls like the colour,' he said.
There's IPL action happening elsewhere too. Apart from watching the matches on television, viewers will have a whole lot of options. They could either catch the matches on giant screens in restaurants - some like Freeze in Rajouri Garden are even complementing the IPL experience with drinks named after the teams - or see them at multiplexes. UFO Moviez, a digital distribution company, will telecast all 60 matches live across theatres in the country. In Delhi, some multiplexes that the company has tied up with are PVR Cinemas, DT Cinemas and Movie Time.
For the first time, IPL has tied up with vRock Mobile to be its Value Added Services ( VAS) partner. It means, apart from getting SMS and MMS updates, users can tune in to commentaries by cricket experts on their mobiles - an experience limited so far to television and radio. If being online is your preferred mode of communication, you can log on to YouTube, which will live stream all 60 IPL matches with a time lapse of only five minutes.
Fans can also catch the cricketing fever by downloading the IPL application on their iPhones or by tackling the official IPL T20 game that has been launched by IndiaGames on Facebook. The online media, meanwhile, is buzzing with activity.
An analysis by The Nielsen Company using Nielsen Online BuzzMetrics, which has measured online posts on message boards, blogs, discussion groups and Twitter across all cricket- following nations, have found that the overall buzz about IPL in social media is almost twice as high this year.
The analysis shows that Kolkata Night Riders is the most discussed team online, a distinction it had in 2009. Among the players, Ricky Ponting is the most discussed online, like he was last year.
This year, the IPL management is also out to prove that it is not only about fun and games. It has partnered with the UN Environment Programme to make cricket fans across the world more eco-sensitive.
Through this long- term partnership, the IPL joins the ranks of global events such as the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, and even the 2010 Commonwealth Games, which are working hard to project themselves as 'green' events. IPL has grown, and how!
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