[Guest post by Seema Gupta– Professor at IIM Bangalore]
Have you ever thought of owning an IPL team? Yes you can live this dream through the advent of Gamification in IPL. As the cricket fever is in full flow during the seventh season of Indian Premier League, the fantasy version is back again looking to repeat its success story of last year. The digital version of the T20 cricket that debuted last year saw participation from about 550,000 players from across the globe, which was quite large than the expected mark.
What is Fantasy Cricket?
Fantasy Cricket is a part of the Fantasy Sports genre. It is an online game where you create a virtual team of real cricket players and score points depending on how your chosen players perform in real life matches. To win a tournament, you must work towards attaining the maximum points and the No. 1 rank on the leader-board. Like any other fantasy sport, the main purpose is to give the users a simulated experience of the game.
Why is it engaging?
1. Feel of being owner: User gets the feel of being the owner of a team. Player gets allotted virtual money from which he has to buy players and builds his team. Basically you are given the experience of an actual Cricket team selector with you having to choose your team from the best players on offer.
2. Easy to play: User just has to login with his Facebook account, he has to make no new accounts.
3. Regular updation: There is an option to Change Squad by which user gets to update his squad before every match thus removing underperforming players and including good performers.
4. Competition: There are Facebook Leagues where user gets to compete with his facebook friends in every match and competition increases engagement.
How IPL benefits from Fantasy Cricket?
1. Sponsorship: Sponsors spend huge amount money, they have to recover it, fantasy cricket sites are a good medium to recover money through advertising.
2. IPL Viewing: As users need information regarding performance of a player, they regularly watch matches or take updates on score and individual performances.
3.Increasing digital engagement: The objective of the game is also to drastically increase the digital engagement of IPL by increasing the reach of the IPL T20 website and adding stickiness to it.
How can marketers leverage Fantasy Cricket?
Gamification through fantasy cricket in IPL actively engages user by arousing sensory, emotional, cognitive and relational stimuli and hence its impactful. Fantasy Cricket is at the hub of three dynamic industry spokes, namely, Internet, Gaming and Cricket. In India, where cricket is almost the only sport enjoyed by its population of over 1 billion people and with industry projections putting Internet penetration at an encouraging $300mn and online gaming at $200mn by 2010, Fantasy Cricket in the country has great potential for marketers. They can start fantasy cricket sites of their own and leverage audience craze during tournaments like IPL, World Cup etc. These sites attract huge crowds and large revenues can be earned through advertisements. As a result many sites that cater to the daily fantasy cricket user are popping up regularly.
Read more about Advergaming:
Advertising in Games for Promoting the Brand
4 Effects of Advergames on Consumers
Seema Gupta is a Professor at IIM Bangalore and teaches, consults and trains in Digital Marketing. She writes a blog DigitalMarketingTadka.com
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