The whole story of ICC-BCCI-Indian players involved a lot of characters playing different part which can be correlated to the actual business world.
Here ICC (International employer) is the International governing body of cricket which decides on scheduling of cricket matches and venues so it served as an employer to cricketers who are treated as employees. BCCI (National employer) is on the other hand is another employer who employs Indian cricketers. Indian cricketers have an employment contract with BCCI for playing matches and gaining match fees and other revenues but Indian players are also free to use their IPR (intellectual Property Right) which in this case is their brand value and their cricketing skills to fetch money through endorsements and other activities.
Divulging more on controversy and outcome where ICC forced players to sign an agreement which has two major points of contention - the imaging clause, which allowed the official sponsors of the tournament to use images of participating players for up to six months after the event, and the 'ambush marketing' clause, which prohibited a player from endorsing products that rivaled those of the official sponsors' for a period of 30 days before and after the tournament.
This paragraph shows the ICC side of the story where as on the other hand BCCI was also forcing player to sign contract by giving deadlines and following strict measures and emotional blackmailing by questioning cricketers’ loyalty towards their country and alleging cricketers for choosing money over nation. But what was the hidden issue is that if player would have boycotted the tournament in the event of the ICC being unrelenting in its stance, the BCCI risked a huge fine being imposed on it by the game's ruling body. On the other hand, as a full member-country, the BCCI stood to gain over $9 million as its share from ICC television and sponsorship rights.
Players side of the story that they wouldn’t be able to earn anything from their IPR if they signed the agreement till the term of the contract (same case as in case of Open Source Software development where employees won’t be earning for their IPR from outside the company).
Outcome of the controversy was that ICC relaxed its norms and The ICC seems to have recognized the unique situation of the Indian players and agreed to reduce the 'ambush marketing' clause to a period of 5 days after the tournament for the Indians. The ICC also indicated that the imaging clause would not be an issue since none of the official sponsors of the tournament were intending to use the players' images for the period specified by the original contract.
Now looking at the story from different perspectives it teaches that Indian cricketers (employees) have a bargaining power in their hands because of their popularity in world of cricket and secondly a country like India where cricket is religion so any event without a fine Indian team won’t fetch much revenue to ICC (employer) so it has to soften its stance so here employees are more powerful than employer and thus they forced employer(both BCCI and ICC) to do away with their autocratic way and deal in democratic way.
1 comment:
Now, if we consider the two clauses that were the point of contention, mainly the “ambush marketing” clause and the “imaging clause” we have some interesting facts. Pepsi, which was the official sponsor of Champion’s Trophy, 2002 itself had involved in ambush marketing during the cricket world cup 1996 with its massive advertising blitz, based on the catch-line: “Nothing Official About It” where, soft drinks giant Coke had paid a fortune for the right to call itself the official sponsor of the World Cup. Now in 2002 it was trying to stop ambush marketing. And many of the Indian players had contracts with its rival Coke. Here we see that companies who have power and money try and influence the decisions many a times
Post a Comment