From merchandise to online club, Delhi Daredevils is going all out for its branding

Delhi Daredevils | The Gautam Gambhir-led team was purchased by GM Rao owned GMR Group. In March 2018, GMR Sports sold its 50 percent stake to JSW Sports. (Image: Twitter/Delhi Daredevils)

It is not just Ricky Ponting’s effervescence or Gautam Gambhir’s comeback to the team that is keeping Delhi Daredevil's fans engaged. The team management is also rolling out a power-packed branding campaign to maintain the fan interest through the campaign.

And for that, the GMR Group-owned team, is concentrating on experience enhancement for fans, both on and off the stadium grounds.

The team, valued at Rs 1,100 crore, is backed  by 12 sponsors, and has partners like Suzuki, Nerolac, DTDC, Air India, Tic Tac, Coca Cola, among others.

To start with, to enhance the match watching experience at the team's home ground, Feroz Shah Kotla, the team has contributed Rs 5 crore for the ground's upgradation. The West Stand, where seats were given away to sponsors, is now being converted into a ticketed zone. This might increase ticketing revenues by 15 percent.

About 20 percent of the seats have also been upgraded to Super Hospitality zone. This zone now has a capacity of 11,00 seats and offers everything from better seats to food & beverages, which are pre-packaged with the ticket. Considering the heat, the stadium will also have water sprinklers in the seating areas.

Co-owned by JSW Sports, the team has started an online club, Team D2, which will have on its website an interactive live leader board. It will allow fans and followers to post comments and given their opinion. Fans who will do maximum interaction will get a meet and greet opportunity with the team. Lucky ones will get to travel with team DD for their matches. There would be 12 lucky winners in the category.

“Merchandising is another key area for us this season and we are looking at it as a revenue earner. We have tied up with a Delhi-based manufacturer, T10, for the merchandise that will be available on our site, across eight partner shop in Delhi and on e-commerce portals like Amazon and Flipkart,” said Hemant Dua, CEO, GMR Sports

While The Lalit is the hospitality partner, DD is not ruling out the chances of the chain becoming the F&B partner, too.

“We are also planning to go aggressive on social media unlike other seasons. Our tie up with Paytm as ticketing partners was also to cash on their reach and increase interaction between fans and the team. We are trying to live up to our new theme song for the season ‘Delhi Hai Dhadkega’,” added Dua.