In one of the recent developments in the cricket fraternity, the organizers of the Abu Dhabi T10, T Ten Global Sports announced the inaugural season of the US Masters T10 League in Dallas, Texas. Preceding this blockbuster update, T Ten Global Sports also unveiled the first-ever edition of the Indian Masters T10, earlier this year in March. The announcement was done by the organizers in Mumbai.
The first season itself will be quite star-studded featuring the likes of Murali Vijay, Harbhajan Singh, Robin Uthappa, Yusuf Pathan, Irfan Pathan, Pragyan Ojha, Mohammed Kaif, Suresh Raina, Kieron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo, Jacques Kallis, Eoin Morgan, Chris Gayle, and Brett Lee. The inaugural edition featuring retired players will be conducted between June 14 – 28, 2023 and will consist of 19 fixtures with teams co-owned by renowned Bollywood celebrities and major corporate houses.
SportsMint Media got an esteemed opportunity of speaking to Mr Rajeev Khanna, Chief Co-operating Officer (COO) at T10 League. In this conversation, Mr Khanna went on to speak about various different commercial aspects regarding the upcoming enthralling inaugural edition of the fastest format of the sport.
1. How will the companies’ interest in the competition help Indian Masters T10 before its inaugural season?
Viacom18 is our partner for the Abu Dhabi T10 and we are also in talks with other businesses. And there is a huge interest among them. Everyone’s coming forward and showing their interest. The big corporate houses see meat in this product and we hope that we definitely get a good deal out of them.
2. Will Legends T10 also need multiple box office players to attract the crowd and advertisers?
Absolutely, the good part about Indian Masters T10 is that we are talking about retired players, who are already legends. They all have played the supreme most cricket and people love them. We are looking at tier two and three cities, where these guys are like the gods of cricket. So that’s what we are targeting and that’s where we see that. Going to these cities will definitely help us in getting the crowds into the stadium and also will help us in terms of building the whole brand.
3. Could you please elaborate on what procedure will be followed to onboard sponsors?
We have a full team who works in sales and sponsorship. So, we go to our prospective sponsors and see what are the companies sponsoring the Indian Premier League (IPL) teams and other franchise sports.
Then we target our set of companies. Once companies come to know about the competition, they will definitely come in numbers. We do proper due diligence on what sort of people we want to be associated with, we are looking at associating with some of the best brands in the country. We do not want to just get anyone and everyone. Because it is cricket and global stars are playing, everyone would want to be associated but we don’t want to do that. We will have very respectable corporates who would be part of the league, whether from the ownership or sponsorship sides.
4. Will Indian Masters T10 have different broadcasters for TV and OTT?
We are in a very nascent state right now and not looking at having different partners for TV or OTT. We are looking at having one common broadcaster for TV and OTT and selling the rights as a combo rather than separately.