Sportolysis – The World Sports Blog

Chelsea and Yash Raj films enter into a partnership. Maverick has more on it. Why go into such a partnership? Abhishek Bachchan, the hero of the film, tells us via this statement:

The character I play in the film is of a very loyal Chelsea fan. I have now had the chance to see Chelsea live after following them over the last few years and the club have given me a jersey with my character’s name Ricky on it, so that was fun.

The premiership is becoming big in India but it is still not being able to sell the jerseys of star players. India has missed the bus on this craze so far. Firstly, BCCI didn’t market selling shirts as well (we still don’t have BCCI official cricket shops like we have NBA stores). However, Pepsi increased it’s product sales by offering team jerseys coinciding with the 1999 world cup and then the BCCI encashed a fair bit before and during the 2003 world cup.

The big problem with jersey sales in India is the price sensitive nature of the consumer. People would rather have an unofficial t-shirt than the official costlier one. Who is to say Chelsea is looking just at jersey sales? They want to sell every thing possible to the fans and via the help of bollywood, possibly attract newer fans as well. Yash Raj films get to promote their film and it is a win-win situation for both.

The consumer sports luxury good market in India is still largely untapped and Chelsea is hoping to capture some of that market share. I won’t buy Chelsea jerseys though as we all know that Barcelona>>>>>>>>>>>>Chelsea! ;)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 8:45 pm and is filed under Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.