Rajasthan Royals has today announced a partnership with the South Australian Government in an exclusive cricketing endeavour that will provide five young Indian cricketers the chance to travel to Adelaide, ailment Australia to experience their cricket facilities as part of Adelaide’s ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 programme.

Youngsters born 1 January 1997 to 31 December 1999 will be eligible to enter the competition for a chance to be selected.

The programme will reach out to students from schools from different parts of the country and the selection trials will be held in Delhi and Mumbai in late October and early November 2014.

The Premier of South Australia, impotent Jay Wetherill is on an official visit to India today and announced that Members of the Dream Team 15 will receive training from top coaches of the South Australian Cricket Association and will play matches against teams of South Australian school boys of the same age group.

Raghu Iyer, discount CEO of Rajasthan Royals, said: ”As a team, Royals have identified, nurtured and given playing opportunities to many of India’s top young cricketers.

“Therefore it is a privilege for Rajasthan Royals to partner South Australia in a unique endeavour that will help Indian school children receive fine training from top coaches of the South Australian Cricket Association.

“We thank the South Australian Premier, Jay Wetherill for taking forward such a commendable undertaking.”

Jay Weatherill said “Our objective with this program is to harness the passion that Indians have for the game and provide an opportunity to good cricketers who have the skills and love for cricket, but have not enrolled in a formal training program.”

The ATP tour has cancelled the inaugural Israel Open which was scheduled to be played in Tel Aviv next month, there because of security concerns ‘arising from the military conflict in the region’.

The tournament was due to be held September 15-21 and would have been the first ATP tournament staged in Israel since 1996.

But amid Israel’s military campaign against Hamas militants in the Gaza strip, ATP President Chris Kermode said he doesn’t feel they can proceed as planned given the situation in the region.

‘‘Ensuring the security of our players, fans and all those involved in organising a world-class event, is our No.1 priority,’’ Kermode said in a statement.

‘‘We hope to be back in Tel Aviv next year. In the meantime and much more importantly, we hope for a swift return to peace in the region.’’

Asaf Tochmeir, the chairman of the Israeli Tennis Association, said he regretted the decision.

‘‘We at the ITA have done everything to ensure a successful ATP event takes place in Israel,’’ he said.

‘‘We have raised sufficient funding and have taken care of all organisational requirements.

‘‘On this occasion, I would like to express our most heartfelt concern for the soldiers as well as our condolences for the civilian casualties. We hope for a swift resolution to the current situation.’’

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The Swiss Sailing addition to the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race has been launched on the South Coast of the UK.

The yacht, order which is simply named Switzerland, features the national flag and was unveiled by former Miss Switzerland Jennifer Ann Gerber.

President of Swiss Sailing Vincent Hagin, chairman and founder of the Clipper Race Sir Robin-Knox Johnston and team skipper Vicky Ellis were also on hand with Gerber at the launch.

Hagin said: “Swiss Sailing is proud to promote sailing with this partnership. We strongly believe Clipper Round the World Yacht Race is an outstanding event to show the possibilities and the beauty of our sport.

“We are very happy to enable with our partnership the adventure of a circumnavigation to amateur sailors. We can’t wait to hear their feedback!”

The Clipper Race allows amateurs the chance to sail around the world with an experience skipper and Ellis was proud to lead the team.

“Watching novice sailors become capable yachtsmen and yachtswomen is very rewarding, but to lead my own team around the world on behalf of Swiss Sailing is a huge honour,” Ellis said.

Speaking a day after launching the GREAT Britain boat in Trafalgar Square, London, Sir Robin commented: “I’m extremely pleased to be here today to welcome our Team Partners, Swiss Sailing on board the ninth edition of the race.

“Switzerland has a rich history of participation in ocean racing and we hope that involvement with the Clipper Race will allow them to build on the history and legacy within the sport in Switzerland.”

Some months ago, a well known sports brand reached 5million fans on Facebook, so they posted on their wall to celebrate the happy event: “Today is a magical date that we will never forget. Today we are going to reach 5 million fans in our football page. We only can say something to you: 5 MILLION OF THANKS”

They only received nine comments, eight of which were the usual mumblings, but one of them was happy to say what he thought: “Today is also my birthday and that is more magical. The 5 million fans don’t say anything to me. You guys are getting a little boring”.

Last October, Facebook Pages started displaying the new “Talking About This” metric, which measures the number of unique people who have created a story (comment, like, share) about a specific page during the last week. From this data derives another interesting one: the engagement ratio (ER) – a percentage that measures how many fans really interact with the page.  

Over the last three weeks, the average ER for the major European football clubs on Facebook (Real Madrid, FC, Barcelona and Manchester United) was 3.5% of an average fan base of more than 20million each.

I remember many meetings concerning the number of fans clubs have. Some people said: “But, ‘Club A’ have more fans than us. We must do something”. 

A second point of view was: “What is important is not the size, but what we do with those fans.”

The latter way of thinking is the one that produces great content and entertainment.

Unfortunately, the alpha male attitude seems to prevail and everyone is in the rat race of collecting more fans and boast about it. Every day a new ranking appears and every day people run to look at it and get very happy or very frustrated.

But, time has given reason to the second point of view. If football is one of the most passionate sports and if we are talking about some of the most representative brands in the sector, a 3.5% ER is something not to be proud of.

The fact is that most of us are managing these new social media assets the same way we did with old media. We have a lot of fans and reach? Great! Let´s push messages like crazy and let´s boast about our supposed reach. Elements like ER (Edge Rank) and the structure of the new Facebook Wall has put us back into place. It doesn’t matter how many fans we have, we are not going to reach any of them if we are not relevant.

The point is that we are missing the opportunity to use the new technical possibilities of engagement, as well as the data and insights behind it. Now, we know who the fans are, their sex, age, language, country and city. We even know what kind of messages they responded to in the past and what do they do after that.  We can use all this data to profile remarkable content in the way of customized messages, engaging apps, demanding polls, video that shows the bowels of the club and so on.

However, most of us limit ourselves to the average post with a link.

Sponsors and licensors must be more deeply involved. Closing deals or enhancing old ones based on a number of followers is not going to be relevant at all. A due diligence of the sponsee´s social media assets must include a deep look at the insights of the fan base, to what kind of stimulus they react to and a deep thinking about how products or services can engage with the rightholder´s brand in a meaningful way.

Nowadays most deals are based on number of posts, tweets or video displays without any deep analysis. A vicious circle occurs where poor results arrive because of irrelevant content and more messages are pushed to obtain results. This creates a negative attitude, or worst than that, the audience will start to ignore us (remember the low engagement rates?). In the process we also run the risk of killing our social media assets.

The responsibility is not small because we can diminish the value of our own media. If brands like football clubs, that are supposed to create some of the most deep and engaging relationships, do not produce real value, this can give support to those that suggest that social media is a fad and a waste of time. You may hear the familiar sound of a bubble being burst with all the negative effects towards digital media.

Strategic movements like the new public ER, as well as insights data, new monetization and advertising solutions are efforts for platforms like Facebook and Twitter to provide brands with tools to create more relevant content and increase not only their own value, but the whole platform itself. Being a part of an industry like sports, with such a big passion component, requires managing the digital strategy of ‘love brands’ and taking full accountability towards more professional, technical and meaningful content.

If we work this way, maybe the next time we post something we will receive the feedback we expect, instead of the usual blathering, or in the worst case scenario, the echo of an empty space.

About Oscar Ugaz:

Oscar Ugaz is the Regional Project Director at Phantasia Wunderman, a digital business consultancy.

Prior to joining Phantasia Wunderman, Oscar enjoyed a extremely successful spell as Digital Business Manager for Real Madrid C.F, where he managed the club’s e-commerce, online video business, commercial strategy of realmadrid.com portals and social media strategy. He is responsible for launching the club’s Facebook (currently 25millon ‘likes’), Twitter (currently 2.5million followers) and YouTube channel (currently 54million views).

With a career in digital marketing spanning over 15years, including projects with major brands such as Movistar, SABMiller and Toyota, Oscar often travels the globe as a keynote speaker, often participating at events and conferences on Digital Business Strategy.

He has an MBA from Universidad del Pacifico (Lima, Perú) and has been Consultant and Teacher Assistant of the Wharton Business School GCP Project. 

Oscar Ugaz twitter: @oscarugaz

Oscar Ugaz’  

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In the good old days last century, global sponsorship was the preserve of a select number of companies.  Only a handful of sponsorship properties could be considered to have global reach (The Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup, and Formula One Racing).  A similarly small number of brands were big enough to pay the premium for gaining mass market brand exposure at a fraction of the cost of a global advertising campaign.

But technology has changed all that.  Exponential growth in computing power, the internet and mobile has created a new environment.  Brands are now able to reach customers with individual conversations pretty much anywhere in the world.

So why is it that brands continue to invest sometimes seemingly ridiculous sums in sponsorship platforms?  The Rugby World Cup is currently enjoying the patronage of Mastercard, Heineken and DHL, amongst others, even though it is being hosted in a time zone that makes for late nights or early starts for the majority of rugby playing nations.

Next summer sees the ultimate sponsorfest in London with the Olympic and Paralympic Games coming to town.  The London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) recently announced it had achieved revenues of over £700m ( that’s over 1 billion US Dollars) from its domestic sponsor programme. At a quoted £40-80 million for a Tier 1 sponsor, and something in the region of £15-25m for a Tier 2, which must then be at least doubled cover sponsorship activation, what is motivating brands to make these sorts of investments when more direct, cheaper conversations are possible?

The answer lies in objectives.  Sponsors have woken up to the fact that sponsorship has the potential to deliver so much more than mere brand exposure.  The European Sponsorship Association has identified three clusters of objectives: brand building, commercial gains and stakeholder engagement.

Given that, as a clean stadia event, the Olympics offers no old-style brand exposure, Games sponsors must have other targets in mind when contemplating an Olympics investment.

Some are focused on sales.  Coca Cola reportedly sees a global sales uplift of 40% around a Summer Games. Similarly, GE reported sales exceeding $700m from their Beijing sponsorship prior to the 2008 Games beginning.

Others have employee engagement as a priority. Lloyds TSB is one company using employee engagement to deliver brand and sales growth through its London 2012 sponsorship. Inspiring staff to be better than their best is a key pillar of Cisco’s activation programme as it re-energises its team to focus on core business.

But what binds proficient sponsors together is an understanding of how a sponsorship platform enables them to leverage fans’ interest to create brand engagement,  whether that’s B2B, B2C, B2E or other stakeholders.  Their business cases are predicated on hard numbers –affinity, sales, churn, share price – that makes a global sponsorship investment a business imperative.  So sponsorship is no longer merely the Chairman’s whim.  It is a finely honed tool in a marketer’s arsenal and, at the investment levels these global platforms are commanding, not one to be treated frivolously.

Pippa Collett: Since gaining and MBA from Cranfield, Pippa Collett has become a leading sponsorship practitioner with an extensive client-side career at Shell, American Express and Rank Organisation. Her global sponsorship experience covers the full spectrum from Ferrari in Formula One and the Olympics to cultural projects including The Olivier Awards and The Unilever Series. She joined Sponsorship Consulting in 2006 to work with blue-chip clients such as Siemens, Standard Chartered Bank and Cisco.

As Vice-Chair of The European Sponsorship Association, Pippa has led on key aspects of the developing sponsorship agenda including authorship of ESA’s Sponsorship Assessment & Evaluation Guidelines and introducing the concept of Continuing Professional Development.

Pippa Collett’s

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The Asian Football Confederation has banned reigning Asian Champions League holders Jeonbuk Motors from competing in the 2017 edition of the tournament.

Korea-based Jeonbuk, who are owned by automotive manufacturer Hyundai, have been hit with a nine-point deduction and $90,000 fine by the K-League due to the club’s involvement in a major bribery scandal.

The decision to ban Jeonbuk from continental competition was made by an independent law-making entity, the Entry Control Body.

The scandal has seen a Jeonbuk scout handed a suspended six-month prison sentence on bribery charges.