Why don’t big brands like Nike and Puma sponsor IPL teams if the cricket league is so big and popular?

Indian Premier League (IPL) is Indian tournament (whose brand value touched Rs 34,000 crore mark last year, by the way). So, it’s very fitting that it would attract more of Indian brands.

The names you mentioned, Nike and Puma, and even Adidas, they are international names. And while as big and popular they are, they don’t necessarily target the mid-class Indian consumers. So, at the end of the day, even when the team and IPL itself are trying to approach big names, it comes down to the brand’s marketing strategy.

If the brand doesn’t see any feasible returns by investing in the IPL teams, they won’t associate with them. This has to do very less with the team and IPL’s own overall valuation. So, it’s very unlikely that we would see big brands associate with IPL teams even if the team’s valuation increases to billions. Unless their target audiencechange,and they start appealing a specific target audience, global names like Nike, Puma and more would continue maintaining the distance.

That being said though, IPL teams are big and popular. And they are already sponsored by some of the big Indian brands. So, there’s no point of even discussing that IPL is a big and popular league. Yes, it is! But why international brands aren’t the sponsors of the teams has to do more with their own marketing strategy, instead of the valuation of teams and the IPL brand.