The HIL Fire catching up, truly
Started late, a franchise short, yet the Hockey India League fire is catching up fast and truly.
The new league, a counter to rival faction’s fairly successful World Series Hockey was in the pipeline for almost in the last one and half years, and it has taken definite and true shape now.
The new proposition aptly named Hockey India League, which had already created a path breaking spend by five franchises to the tune of Rs.17.50 crore – definitely much higher than the annual turn over of the global body the FIH – is now talk of the town.
At least in the five city based franchises.
The other day when Jharkhand XI took over the Ranchi Rhinos about a thousand strong crowd thronged the stadium to watch the practice match, this without any wooing effort by the Ranchi Franchise.
When Jamie Dwyer, captain of the Jaypee Punjab Warriors, put his photo of him visiting Golden Temple, it has recorded 300 ‘likes’ within no time.
The teams vist various places to entertain and endear themselves to the country, and in the process creating enormous visibility for the game.
The Delhi streets now boasts hockey billboards, creating a niche for itself in the image conscious capital.
The managers of both Hockey India League and Delhi Waveriders have come out with different concepts in promoting the event, both on different level not heard of in hockey.
Delhi Waveriders’ have commenced hockey publicity and promotional campaign under the name ‘Hello Hockey’ where the aim is to reach out to youth.
They also put up about 40 billboards on major streets
Star Sports channel, which will broadcast all the matches Live in India, has put on board three interesting promos, featuring marquee players SV Sunil, Sandeep Singh and Sardar Singh.
The promos are the ones highly visible in the channel.
Signature columns by Marquee players start appearing at least in one leading newspaper.
Tickets are now up for grab, in Fastrack outlets in Delhi and on different mode in other four cities.
HIL also has lined up both Hero and Airtel, two big ad spenders in the emerging Indian markets, again came on board as title and associate sponsors.
Delhi saw daily press conferences for Jersey release in the last couple of days, each one exceeding media attendance (pic opposite).
With a glittering Trophy to be unveiled today (Sunday) by the Hero group bigwig Pawan Kumar Munjal, the stage for HIL is all set for grand take off.