Lakshmi Narayanan B on how CEAT is leading the way in sports sponsorship

CEAT Ltd, the flagship company of RPG Enterprises, has had a long association with sports, specifically cricket and football. It has been sponsoring Italian Serie A club Torino FC since 2018; in 2020, CEAT became the official tyre partner of Jamshedpur FC for the Indian Super League 2020-21. It has also been a strategic partner to the Indian Premier League (IPL). CEAT was also the official Strategic Timeout Partner for the inaugural edition of the Women’s Premier League 2023, which concluded last month.

In conversation with Adgully, Lakshmi Narayanan B, Chief Marketing Officer, CEAT Ltd, speaks about the tyre manufacturer’s long association with sports, the entire experience of coming on board as the Strategic Timeout Partner for Women’s Premier League, the expectations from women’s cricket, and more.

CEAT was the Strategic Timeout Partner for the Women’s Premier League 2023. How was the association?

We are very glad that we’ve partnered again in the world of cricket. We have been passionate about this particular sport for decades. It’s been in the organisation’s DNA, and it has been a very nice moment for us to sit back and cherish the relationship that we’ve had with the sport and everyone associated with this sport.

There is a clear direction in terms of investing in this particular sport. CEAT has had an association with Hermanpreet, captain of the Indian Women’s Cricket Team for a while now. And then we bagged the rights as the Strategic Timeout Partner. We are clearly hoping that the audience for women’s cricket will increase significantly, just as the men's IPL has scaled up year-on-year from when it had started decade and a half back. We see a similar kind of viewership hike in Women’s Premier League as the fan base goes up. As a brand, we definitely see that happening.

CEAT has been in strategic partnerships with several other sporting events as well. What is your strategy behind partnering with sporting events?

In a way, sports and the category that we are in have a very strong correlation. This is a good analogy. Today, there’s no way that one can kind of sit in the stadium and not be a part of the game. You are always in action. Thus, in that sense there is a strong correlation between the sports personality and the product, who work together. Moreover, the world of sports is continuously evolving; you can see how cricket has evolved significantly. I think those two are pretty much the essence of why CEAT will continue to invest in sports and in the sporting world. The interest of our audience, especially consumers, is pretty high in sports. Today, in India, thanks to the kind of work that everyone has done, we have a large viewership, and being there gives us an association, gives us an opportunity to talk about performance, because sports is all about performance.

What are your marketing goals around the Women's Premier League?

The marketing goal primarily is to take the brand to as many consumers as possible. There is a lot of work that we are doing around innovation and our product performance. We would like to take this across to as many people in the country as possible. With WPL, we also intended to communicate to a fairly large audience. Each sporting event has a certain kind of viewership. We definitely saw a slightly more diverse audience here, and we intended to leverage that particular space. That was the key objective for CEAT for the whole season.

Who is your target audience and how are you planning to reach out to them via this strategic partnership?

The good part is its presence in multiple categories. Today, we are the market leaders as far as two-wheelers are concerned, even in the world of passenger cars, speed cars, and SUVs for that matter. While we are present in all of these categories, but as far as Women’s Premier League was concerned, we focussed on scooters.

What are your observations on the rise of women’s cricket?  

As the sport evolves and the audience evolves, the scale of the audience will also significantly evolve. Women’s cricket is at an important stage, and Women’s Premier League is going to be that point of inflection from where things will take off significantly. We have seen it in the past as well and we will see a lot of next-generation players stepping into the sport. It will be wonderful not just for the sport, but overall as a country. I think, it will be a lot more involved and gifted generation.

Will Women’s Premier League gain the kind of attraction that IPL has gained?

Yes. I think what IPL has taught us clearly is that the more engaging that the world of sports becomes and the more excitement that the sport can provide to the audience, the more traction it will gain. And you will get a broad pan-India audience. While the initial few teams of WPL are based on certain geographies, you will see it widen over the course of time. It’s a natural progression. We have seen this in multiple sports – not just in India, but across the world. So, there is a certain trend that WPL will also follow. How fast that evolution happens is what all brands, including CEAT, is very keenly looking forward to.

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