Brands are now after Women cricketers for their merchandise endorsement. This change is because of their win over England in the final of the inaugural ICC Women’s U19 World Cup and the upcoming Women’s Premier League(WPL).
Some companies are running limited online campaigns. Last week, Puma launched an ad campaign featuring Indian captain Harmanpreet Kaur for an unique social media experiment that revealed perception for a particular gender for sports.
According to Shreya Sachdev, marketing head for puma said that it was assumed by 80% of the respondents that the next brand ambassador would be a male cricketer. Women sports persons are not given enough visibility that they deserve. Sachdev also added, the achievement of women in sports is no less than men. They won the Under 19 world cup and as a brand Puma want to spread a message that the country should be proud and celebrate their achievements which currently is missing. It was the “social experiment” by Puma to reveal Harmanpreet Kaur as their mystery brand ambassador.
Aviral Jain, managing director valuation advisory, Kroll, formerly Duff & Phelps also mentioned that as the Indian women has lifted ICC Under 19 World Cup trophy and the hype for WPL, the women cricketers can leverage this opportunity in expanding their endorsement portfolios. Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana are the top cricketers and they are endorsing around 20 brands in total and have added marquee companies which include Hyundai, ICICI Bank and Puma. Jain also mentioned that we can see an exponential increase in the social media followers of our women team making the number to 15 million and 5 million followers for Mandhana and Kaur respectively.
According to reports, top players like Mandhana do charge 50 lakhs-80 lakhs and even a crore for certain deals. Kaur’s fee of 40 lakhs-60 lakhs per brand endorsement is in line with some entry level male cricketers. The endorsement charge for younger women cricketers is 15lakhs-20lakhs.
According to Tuhin Mishra, Baseline Ventures’ co-founder and managing director, the company is noticing an increase in interest in endorsing both the senior squad and under-19 women cricketers. Baseline Ventures represents cricketers like Mandhana. Companies are either hiring these social media influencers or designating them as brand ambassadors.