The art of sports marketing is all about creating fan awareness through allegiance, enlightened ideals, and persuasive relationships. Athletes are viewed as cultural products. We give them the means to develop their own personal brands outside their sports legacy.
If we look at India then it is home to some of the best sports marketing and management companies who are in competition with global giants.
However, Sports management and marketing is a multi-billion-dollar industry in India. Professional sports have many fields around it which are emerging every day. With increasing corporate investment, media rights, international athletes, and the number of leagues in operation, there is a need for efficient sports management companies and sports management professionals to ensure that the sports industry in India runs smoothly.
In 2021, sports was the only thing that kept everyone’s spirits high despite the much gloom and doom around. The Bangalore-based Elite Sports Management – a globally-connected top player in the sports management and marketing leagues, is proud to be the gamechanger of people’s mood since 2000.
Established in 2003, Elite Sports Management is one of the Top Sports Marketing companies in India. It has four major verticals and works in a 360-degree approach. Elite has expertise in its four verticals, which are – Player Management, Sports Marketing, Brand Consultancy, and Designing of Premier Leagues.
“We are essentially a solutions provider who try to provide brands with the right match in sports, building authority and recall with their functionality. It is nearly impossible to achieve this in the plethora of media noise of today. Therefore, we adopt apt strategies to support brands through key solutions proven over a period of time,” commented the esteemed Director of Elite Sports Management – Mr Nishant Dayal.
Elite Sports Management is an 18-year-old sports company that is into sports marketing, player management, designing of the premier league and sports consultancy for brands. Being one of the top sports companies, Elite creates a 360-degree approach to player management and brand consultancy in sports. Working very closely with key cricketers of the world to handle top brands of the country, Elite has reached the level of more than 100% deliveries and customer satisfaction to its best.
In the vertical of designing Premier League, Elite designed the first domestic premier league which was Telecasted Live on a global sports channel in 2011, Jharkhand Premier League. The challenge was such a small state and having Live at Ten Cricket, was an achievement. It was a franchise-based league, which full lustres of Live Player Auction and matches in floodlights.
Player Management has been a very straight-line approach and players like Saurabh Tiwary in their ‘under 19s’ to playing for Team India was customized who could associate quite a few brands to help in due course of their careers.
Elite Sports has spearheaded numerous appearances and endorsements for many international cricketers such as CG- Chris Gayle.
We worked hand-in-glove with them to redefine their association with brands and created their own branding example- ‘Universe Boss’ Chris Gayle and ‘Champion Song Fame’ Dwayne Bravo.
Services/Offerings
• Brand Consultancy.
• Strategically defining entry-level of brand inception to make it ready for rounds of investments.
• From Brand Planning to go to the Global market from a step-by-step process.
The Inspiring Leader
Nishant Dayal comes with a rich experience of over 20 years in Sports Management. An MBA from Cardiff, a sports enthusiast and an avid sports league designer.
Nishant’s ideation at Elite Sports has been incredible. Out-of-the-Box thinking with a 360-degree approach is what he specialises in. Apart from this, he has been instrumental in building relationships with players in a personal way and thus making the professional relationship more productive.
He is very organized and structured when it comes to pulling the team and driving the sports events to perfection. Elite has always seen the blend of interpersonal skills and professional commitments to delivery at Pinnacle.
Being a part-time cricketer and full-time enthusiast, it was key for Nishant Dayal, the Director of Elite Sports Management, to come into the sports management space. Having carved out many other different activities at Elite, the saying is apt here – “When You Do Something You Like, Work Becomes Play for You.” You can only excel in this.
The Sports Management Space Today
Brands have realized that over a period of time one of the reasonable way to get brand recognition across the nation is on-ground Branding at Live Games. That is the edge of Elite Sports has.
The Exciting Journey
The company’s exciting journey was the storyline with the highest TRP at the ‘The Kapil Sharma Show’ where cricketers were taken to be the guest of Kapil Sharma – the Laughter King of the Country.
The most important aspect of Sports Management has been the brand association, whether it is the Indian Premier League (IPL) or Instadia Branding. With Sun Risers Hyderabad, we have a few brands to Sponsor along with a lot featuring in the Instadia Branding.
Elite got BYJU’S, a learning app, to the Cricket Branding in 2016, and the brand never looked back. A long journey for the biggest education technology brand – BYJU’S – has been centric to cricket in a bigger way. The growth of the BYJU’S was directly proportional to the Branding Quantum over the years – a true success story.
Elite has worked very closely with the following brands naming a few – BYJU’S, Ralco, Attitude, Hike Messenger, SOBHA, Iona Entertainment, Max Cement, Titan, DTDC, Manav Rachna, Videocon, ITM University, Reliance Mobile, and others.
Enduring Hardships
Although the field of sports management was very challenging, Nishant Dayal’s challenge was not only to get into one but to raise the bar to a different level to compete with the global sports market. There was no trust in brands to start with earlier as the company’s used to give commitments, but the deliveries were far from the reality. He took everything in his stride positively to commit less and deliver higher than the expectation. This won accolades for Elite Sports with every association.
Setting a Standard
Elite also ideated their concepts for leagues to the Franchise-based sports leagues and is proudly recognised as a Sports Contributor. Elite has experience in designing leagues for 12 years now. Elite is working with 50 stadiums and in 10 cricketing nations across the globe
Under the Aegis of Elite Sports Management, a foundation is run – Dr Dayal Foundation (DDF). With other multiple activities run under DDF, the most important and first-of-its-kind was started in 2006 to distribute Cricket kits to the Cricketers who have talent but lack resources. To date, Elite still distributes Cricket Kits to people in Delhi, Bihar, Jharkhand, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, etc. The first recipient of the Cricket KIT was Varun Aaron.
The Pandemic Times
This pandemic was truly a tough time for everyone at Elite Sports as it was for the entire world. “It was more our foundation – DDF, which was active into activities but we waiting for the right time to use this pandemic at home. We conceptualized Bihar Cricket League (BCL) and did a ‘7 Day League’ without Generic Tickets at 50% Capacity with all norms in place. By god’s grace, we were able to conduct a COVID-Free successful league before the second wave came around,” said the team over at Elite Sports Management.
The latest of the league, which was pulled out in the midst of COVID-19 was the Bihar Cricket League (BCL). Bihar, being one of the oldest cricket associations, was deprived of cricket for 18 years. Then Elite conducted BCL which was Telecast Live at Eurosport and over 120 players got a chance to play and prove their talent.
Scaling the Future
It’s all about the digital world today, we are here to create a unique space that will have the requirements of the brand to be met and structured differently. Also, about unique branding spaces Instadia, like we saw the era of the printed board to LED. Elite Sports has plans to create a different sports university to make this more vibrant and also give back to society differently.
Going forward, Elite has lots of plans in the grass root levels of cricket and innovative Instadia Brand Planning. Nishant Dayal, the Director of Elite Sports has been the key to ideating the leagues and a guide to planning the activities centric to the Sports Management.
Word to the Wise
“The only thing which Sports required whether on the field or off-field is focus. The young generation needs to stay focused and ideate this which hasn’t been done in the past. Truthfulness is the key and you guys should be “Man and Situation Manager.” Sports won’t demand but always appreciates if you do good… “it’s all about the look and the feel,” concluded Mr Nishant Dayal.
