Following the players auction for the Indian Badminton League IBL, a question comes into consideration.
Are Gutta Jwala and Ashwini Ponnappa Icon Player material?
You’ve got to ask yourself this question, because if you are to be an Icon Player, and you feel - whether it is justified or not - you have been treated badly by the organizers, by the management, your employer or business partner. Do you then, as an Icon Player, go public to the media with your criticism?
I wouldn’t.
Perhaps I would want to. Perhaps I would want to real badly. But in the end I would refrain from critizing the organizers at this stage.
Now why is that?
First of all I think I can understand the players frustration. It’s very understandable. They were promised something. They even made a contractual agreement. They committed to the idea of an Indian Badminton League, and probably felt proud and honoured to be selected Icon Players.
Then the conditions were changed. No ladies doubles event. Because the profile of Indian female doubles players, together with signed-in international players, could not match the benefits from replacing the category with an additional mens single.
From a marketing point of view – or, as I really know next to nothing about marketing, from an interest, enthusiasm or exitement point of view, this is a very reasonable decision.
The problem of course is that the information level of IBL is quite a bit helter-skelter. Normally, it would be impossible to make this sudden change to the categories.
But the IBL is in its first year. It’s a young organiztion. It’s probably a quite inexperienced organization. That organization had to make agreements with players, national and international, to have a product at all.
They then had to rope in companies willing to put money and reputation in all this, to be a part of the Indian Badminton League, to make sure it happened at all. I mean its not like the players would have said ”No money, no problem, we’re just gonna come by and play a little team tournament for all of you lovely Indian fans”. The players are in it for the money. Of course they are.
So naturely the organiztaion has to listen to wishes and demands made by the franchise owners. Some of them hopefully being quite experienced in marketing. This is perhaps new to a lot of government subsidized players, but this league has to earn its own money. If you have a sellable product, you earn money. If not then – zip.
That’s why I would have kept my criticism internally if I were Jwala and Ponnappa. In order to help this league find its feet. To let it grow. To let it learn from its startup errors. To develop itself. To benefit from from this league over the next couple of years. Especially if I was trusted with the honour of being selected Icon Player.
That doesn’t take away the lack of communication, or the sudden structure change or whatever we can come up with that could have been handled in a much better way. But if you want to be an Icon Player you keep your mouth shut, and help the league as well as you’re capable of.
If others choose to criticize thats their decision, but Icon Players are the face of the league and the teams, and you would expect them to be above comments like betrayal and discrimination.
Value for money
So lets take a look at the official argument for lowering their base prize.
The womens double were cut from the program, therefore their value was halved.
Well, that might be true, but only if you’re allowed to play two categories in each team match. I have not been able to secure information whether this actually is the case or not. If not, this argument is not that strong then.
I think the real issue is that there is a very very big difference in the marketing and playing value of the six Icon Players. Thats evident. And as every team needs to have an Icon Player ( or do they ??), the two teams not winning any of the other four players, would be stuck with Jwala and Ponnappa at a too high prize, compared to their actual value.
That might sound harsh. It’s really not meant that way. It’s just that the two players would be part of a very limited market. Their playing abilities quite equal, so why get into a bidding war.
To resolve this problem the league should designate more Icon Players than teams. And the Icon Players base prize should be individually determined. The IP candidates that remains unsold then goes back into the auction for regular players.
As of now it is my opinion that Jwala and Ponnappa actually helped raise the price for P.V. Sindhu and P. Kashyap, as they would initially be more interesting for the teams, as they fill out a unit by themselves whereas Jwala and Ponnappa needed additional partners for the mixed category.
Auction surprises?
A number of international players remained unsold as well.
Noone can be surprised that players not able to commit themselves for the entire playing period remained unsold.
The cap of 275.000 US$ simply doesn’t leave room for such players. Also some of the international players might have overestimated their own value, resulting in demands for a too high base prize. Remeber the organizers were dying to have their names on the auction list, so there was probably little argueing about the base prize.
If i.e. the base prize of a player is questionably high, then I as a franchise manager don’t need to bid for that player, as there is a high probablity that noone else will either. If they do anyway, there is a good probability that they will spend too much money on this player, making it an unprofitable buy overall.
On the other hand if a player is prized too low, I definately must consider bidding in order to prevent other teams to get that player at a bargain.
That mechanism could lead to good players not being sold if the base prize is set too high, and other players getting quite a good prize because they were willing to risk a little value by setting their base prize at a low level from the beginning and thus creating a bidding war.
This also implies that the person in charge of each franchises bidding strategy must either be very knowledgeable or have very good advisors.
Icon Player properties
What then are the properties of an Icon Player? Well there might be many opininons on that, but here is five that I would value.
1) Respectable by colleagues, media and fans
2) Strong playing ability
3) Teamleader
4) High spirited
5) Loyal
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