Virat Kohli will become the 71st cricketer on Friday to play a hundred Tests in the 145-year history of the game, yet notch up a first. No one has maximised their commercial brand like him. Kohli became the first cricketer to figure prominently in the Forbes’ list of top-earning 100 global sportsmen, for four years (2017-20) in a row when he also topped the Duff and Phelps celebrity brand valuation survey for his $ 237.7 million earning valuation.
Cricketers in
Virat Kohli will become the 71st cricketer on Friday to play a hundred Tests in the 145-year history of the game, yet notch up a first. No one has maximised their commercial brand like him. Kohli became the first cricketer to figure prominently in the Forbes’ list of top-earning 100 global sportsmen, for four years (2017-20) in a row when he also topped the Duff and Phelps celebrity brand valuation survey for his $ 237.7 million earning valuation.
Cricketers in the past did possess the heady cocktail of flamboyance and on-field brilliance, Imran Khan, Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Shane Warne among them. But the game wasn't quite the global brand it is now.
Kohli is the first superstar of the IPL generation—he made his India debut in 2008, the year IPL began. It was a pivotal moment as player salaries and sponsorship values shot up. His Test debut came in 2011, almost a year after his T20I debut. He transformed into a fitness freak, shedding this IPL party boy image. Brand Kohli zoomed, the rising star at ease showing off an inked body and stylised beard as well as plonking his foot for a signature cover drive.
Kohli idolised Sachin Tendulkar, the first cricketer to score a commercial hundred with his ₹100 crore deal with World Tel in 2001. But cricket then didn’t have ambitions to get global leverage for its dazzling talent. “When we were doing work with Sachin, I can’t remember a single brand that we did which was private equity funded or had an angel investor, where the fundamentals of the deals are not that much in question,” says Harish Krishnamachar, who managed Tendulkar’s account. “For a lot of deals, we had to justify in terms of revenue, returns and actual change in sales.”
Tendulkar pocketed more money than any other cricketer, but that was nowhere compared to his global peers in other sport. In the same year, according to Forbes, Tiger Woods raked in an annual income of $65 million (prizemoney and endorsements).
“American athletes have been 10-20 years ahead of us and five years ahead of European athletes,” says Santosh N, Managing Partner, D and P Advisory. “In India, league sport is just a 14-year phenomenon, thanks to IPL, and that’s where the merchandising market, for example, got a boost. It’s not been because of BCCI or India playing a bilateral series in South Africa once every few years. It’s still early days, but merchandising is an area where a cricketer like Virat who has been consistent on the field and has the kind of connect with millennials and represents the new aggressive India, has benefited.”
Brand Kohli took a giant leap in 2017 when he signed two separate ₹100-crore plus deals with MRF and Puma. It gave cricket its first entry in the list of top-100 earning sportsmen. It was no coincidence that by then Kohli had become the all-important India captain across formats. Both those deals were long-term, spanning eight years. It signified the faith mega brands had in Kohli, like Nike with LeBron James and Cristiano Ronaldo, and Adidas with David Beckham.
Concurrently, Kohli would invest in a ISL football franchise, in a tennis and wrestling league, and launch his fashion label and gym chain. His roster of 30 brands across industries boosted by his burgeoning social media following left no doubt that he was India’s most desirable celebrity.
INDIFFERENT FORM
But an athlete’s value is dictated by an abstract named form. Constant cricket in empty stadiums and living in bio-bubbles in pandemic times may have contributed, but Kohli has endured an extended patch of indifferent performances. For a man who regularly traded in centuries, there has been none since November, 2019.
The last five months have been chaotic and seen his return to being a mere player, no longer India’s all-format captain, or even that of his IPL team. No efforts were made by BCCI to make his 100th Test an event, moving it from his IPL home Bengaluru to Mohali for logistical convenience.
While Brand Kohli is protected by multi-year contracts, many stretching to 2024-25, some sponsors could be getting jittery as they wait for Kohli to lord over the bowlers again. “Talks of renegotiations in value would come if Kohli doesn’t rediscover form for a longer duration,” said Santosh. “But they would wait and watch because he is someone who has given them enormous value in the past. It also depends whether a young talent in cricket or a Bollywood star begins to make it really big.”
Kohli’s collective salary from BCCI and RCB is capped at ₹24 crores per year, limiting his earning potential. But sky is the limit in the endorsement space. The only way Brand Kohli can keep breaking more glass ceilings is by amassing runs across formats like he used to.
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