Adgully Exclusive | Rhiti Sports Management's Sangeet Shirodkar gets on top of the game

Celebrity sports management has become a distinct field of expertise, which is growing all the time. Once, sports personalities were known only to aficionados. Today, people recognise sportspersons without having watched a single game featuring those famous figures.

Even when India won its only cricket world cup back in 1983, nobody would have believed the proposition that a career lay in sports marketing or celebrity sports management. But of late, sports celebrities are having to sift through plethora of brand-endorsement offers to pick projects that are consistent with their image values.

That celebrities wield very large portfolios ” as many as 20 brands in some cases ” indicates the stupendous rise of celebrity sports management. Indeed, the discipline has become a formidable, sophisticated specialisation. Internationally, the field is a mature business, with celebrities from hockey, football, basketball, and other sports, linking themselves with brand aristocracy.

It is not an ordinary everyday event when someone surpasses Sachin Tendulkar (who in 2006 had a three-year deal worth Rs 180 crore with sports management firm Iconix) in the endorsement tally.

MS Dhoni recently set new records by signing a whopping Rs 200 crore endorsement deal with with Rhiti Sports Management and Mindscapes. Rhiti Sports is now authorized to handle and organize all of Dhoni's endorsement and brand associations, which include digital rights, images and visibility on networking websites and the like.

Rhiti Sports beat behemoths like IMG, Percept Group, the Sunil Gavaskar-promoted PMG and World Sport Group to clinch the mandate. Rhiti Sports also manages Dhoni's teammates RP Singh and Harbhajan Singh.

Sangeet Shirodkar, the marketing president of this venture, is a professional with rich experience in fields such as journalism, public relation, events ” and now, sports marketing. "Rhiti Sports was able to secure this deal because we had been doing some work with Mr. Dhoni for some time, and we were handling three to four clients for an endorsement," Shirodkar said. "The value in terms of what we could do for him was better. Some of the things which we have thought of have never been done in the celebrity management area. We intend to bring him more value and more premium clients."

Dhoni is associated with around 26 brands, including PepsiCo, Reebok, Aircel, Godrej and Hershey's. On an average, he charges up to Rs 6 crore a year for an endorsement.

"Dhoni doesn't need to be marketed, he is already endorsing 26 brands, and he is known and established," Shirodkar said. "We help him identify the right brand out of the hundred-odd brands that come to him. We make sure he gets the right value. He hardly engages in any media interaction and public appearances and that works very well for him. That's how he is as a person as well, very grounded and reserved which is why people like him. With some brands we see a natural fit, which matches with his persona, so sometimes we go and pitch to those brands, though mostly they come to us."

Rhiti Sports has already done so well that it expects to reach its break-even target by end of this year. There are no other sports celebrities in the company's mind as of now, with the focus being on working on existing clients.

"It is all in the process, this vision to create sports management agency," Shirodkar said. "In time we will have other sports celebrities and not only cricketers and even have deals with upcoming stars. We are open to a lot of new stuff. However all of that will happen eventually." | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]