During his tenure as the President of FIFA, Sepp Blatter once called India the "sleeping giant" of the football world. Looking back, this statement was made in 2012 when India was setting itself up to host the Under-17 World Cup of 2017. Fast forward 5 years, India did manage to host the world cup, which could be called a "success", seeing the attendance figures. Although there were discussions on plans back then, even after over half a decade today, why is India still a "sleeping giant"?
With the inception of the Indian Super League, Nita Ambani and the group of stakeholders which includes Nimaggada Prasad, Sanjiv Goenka, Parth Jindal and many others, believed that following a franchise format like the Indian Premier League in cricket could change the fortunes of football. Although heavy money was invested in bringing in all the well-known veterans in the world during the time to the league, the ISL has not yet managed to get to the pinnacle of success as the IPL did.
From I-League to the newly established Indian Super League, all major and minor clubs in the country have been running on loss for years. With crores said to be in deficit, it is no surprise that the investors are pulling back. This snowballing is an after-effect of many trials and errors while testing the treading waters in this new environment.
Although there have been investments of promise such as that of the City group in Mumbai City FC, it is a rarity to see clubs with financial stability. The sporting model that seemed successful for the first few years in gaining brand value has now been changed to a model of sustainability. The stakeholders of these leagues who heavily invested in them initially have started to see that these expectations were too ahead of themselves.
While there were lakhs of fans watching the IPL in stadiums, the ISL is struggling to get into the thousands. Therefore, the sport unlike cricket needs a boost in the country outside its commercial setup. This implication of sustainable development means that the clubs have to change their strategies which were taken initially to build a self-sufficient environment. One of their strategies could be doubling down on a community-led growth approach in the Indian football environment.
The Kerala Blasters Story
Amidst all this exists a club with huge potential named Kerala Blasters. Although they are known for their massive support across Asia, the club has very minimal sporting success which has led to a recession in their image. While government support is believed to have been inadequate, the administration has also found it difficult to build a strong sporting legacy in the current sporting scenario. The recent disbandment of the women's team has also led experts to debate about the financial constraints in the club.
If the "sustainability" image that the club is trying hard to put up is genuine, they have to set concrete realistic objectives and fulfill them. After these years of reduced expectations and research, we can assume that the football club has a revised set of goals and market strategies. Inculcating them, KBFC can explore creating an all-one engagement platform which can aid them to reach these objectives easily
Considering that the Indian market is a very tough place for a football club, the massive fanbase backing them is a major advantage. Along with its already existent massive social media presence, an integrated marketing strategy can bring in a lot more collaborations into the KBFC network. With one of Asia's biggest communities called Manjappada behind, KBFC, if they play their cards right, can be the most actively sought club in the country.
Even though the club has all these resources within itself, one major difficulty it faces is the scattered nature of the Indian football environment. With different agencies taken up for different activities such as merchandising, marketing, even creation and many more, the club finds it difficult to establish an integrated and robust presence in the industry. The club has made strenuous attempts earlier to engage with the fans by creating events such as jersey-designing contests.
Although that engagement was fruitful initially, it was short-lived. It's the same challenge other brands face when engaging their fans on third-party platforms where they are always dependent on a "rented audience". What works best in the long term is owning your audience and converting that into your community on your own platform.
What can be done by the club?
It is the perfect time for KBFC to create its own platform in order to foster its biggest asset, its community. With its already-established independent business entity called the House of KBFC, the club could generate revenue like no other in the country. However, to set it up for success, KBFC has to unify all its assets under a platform.
This is where MainCross could be the perfect solution to the club's issue of finding a unified community space. A space that could revolutionize the field of football inspired by today's biggest brands such as Lego. With all the key features we discussed earlier, the club could finally find a settled structure they have been in search of for long.
Some of the key features that MainCross offers include:
- Everything for fan engagement: fan profiles, ask me anything, polls, quizzes
- Badges and gamification
- Publishing content to create a KBFC interactive information hub
- Integrating commerce via ticketing, merchandise etc
By adopting the pre-integrated commerce features of MainCross, KBFC could sell their own merchandise under the pricing that could satisfy both the club and its fans without the involvement of any agency. Segmenting a channel dedicated to the fans could also help the club understand the fans' expectations and needs for the season. The club also could use the fan-engagement platform to collaborate with major fan clubs and create off-season events in order to create hype as well as revenue.
MainCross provides a platform for location-based networking which could help the club build their base operations smoothly in order to form offline meetings. Targeting locations by understanding their culture and needs will also help the club build a local connection with the fans. Using the already established networks across third-party mediums, KBFC could bring in the engagements from there with the help of MainCross's social media CMS.
Along with it, MainCross has its own in-built social feature which lets fans like, subscribe and comment to express themselves. Badges provided by the platform also encourage fans to interact and connect more with the community. MainCross also provides the feature of bookmarking posts which the fans might see as important. Along with it, there is in-built gamification with a leaderboard and referral links which adds to the user experience. Thus, MainCross intends to give the community all that it requires within its capacity.
History has always backed clubs with such enormous character. By connecting deeper with its community, KBFC can build a very strong club and brand affinity. Taking Manjappada's words, we at MainCross also ensure that "Together we will make it count. Together we will win."
