IPL partners with Twitter to engage fans

The Indian Premium League (IPL) is one of the most sought after branding platforms. It engages cricket fans from not only India but around the world. Cricket as a game surpasses the boundaries of gender, age and community and provides the brands with a wide demographic they can easily target. From the inception of the tournament in 2008, for the first time a part of the season is being held in UAE, allowing the brands an even bigger platform to delve in.
With the start of the seventh IPL season numerous brands are coming forward with innovative promotions and partnerships. Twitter has seized the opportunity and partnered with the most sought after tournament this season to bring real time experiences to fans. After their association in 2013, IPL and Twitter are set to unveil a live, interactive and conversational experience for cricket fans globally. The partnership between the two brands will be incorporated on-ground, on-air and online.
‘This partnership represents yet another watershed moment at the intersection of Twitter and sports. By bringing together Twitter best practices and innovation at such scale to a global audience, IPL is again truly connecting to the pulse of today’s cricket fans. We congratulate them for giving fans around the world meaningful opportunities to discover content, converse and self-express as part of the live, public conversation that is IPL,’ said Rishi Jaitly – India Marketing Director, Twitter.



The social networking website has rolled out eight new initiatives that will provide the fans an opportunity to get up from their benches and be a part of the global cricket conversation. The initiatives include Twitter IPL Calendar, IPL Pulse, Best Tweets and Hashtag Battles, #IPL Selfie, #IPL Magic, @IPL SpiderCam, #TwitterMirror and Twitter Q&As.
The IPL Calendar will allow the fans to set reminders for their favourite matches. This can be done simply by tweeting @IPL with the hashtag #Calendar. Through this fans will receive calendar entries for every IPL match on their mobile phone, which will remind them of the match’s starting time, 10 minutes before that start of each game.
With IPL Pulse, fans will also hear the story of IPL 7, as told through Twitter Data and data visualizations depicted in broadcast highlighting the most buzzing players, conversations, and trends. This feature will also be available on the IPL website during the tournament. Fans that are present at the stadium and are cheering for their favourite team or player can tweet with #PepsiIPL as well and experience the visualization growing larger-than-life on the giant screens.
The fans will also have the opportunity to see the best tweets on the screen with the Best Tweets feature and Hashtag Battles will allow them to vote for their favourite teams and players. With the teams battling it out on the field, Twitter will become an off-the-field war zone for IPL fans. The results of the battle will be showcased in real-time throughout the match.
The concept of ‘Selfies’ has spread like wildfire. With the Oscar Selfie going viral on twitter, it is now the turn of cricket buffs to join in. With #IPLselfie, fans tweeting with this hashtag will have their photos featured on the IPL website.
At the end of each match, supporters will have a chance to receive a personalized photo message with an iconic image from every match of the latest season of IPL when they tweet to @IPL with #Magic. The #IPL Magic is a great way to connect directly with the fans as this initiative is personalized for every user with a message by the captain of the team featured in the photo. This will be the first global interactive experience for a sports league at this scale.
Ever wondered what the players are doing when they aren’t on the field? The @IPLSpiderCam feature will provide fans an access to exclusive behind-the-scene content from the game. The photos will be available real-time through @IPLSpiderCam Twitter account.
The current season will also see the debut of the autographed #TwitterMirror feature which will allow the players and members of the winning team the ability to share candid messages with fans through customized photos, which will be tweeted from @IPL. The story of IPL will also be told through six-second Vine videos through the 2014 season.
The final feature, called Twitter Q&As, will give the fans an opportunity to interact with players and commentators on a one-on-one basis. The official twitter handle of the tournament, @IPL, presently has over 1.3 million followers and will be used for this interaction.
Ranjib Biswal, Chairman, IPL Governing Council, shared his views on the partnership, ‘IPL has always set the bar high for fan engagement. This next phase of our partnership with Twitter will ensure that fans can not only take in the action this summer but participate in the fun in real-time with unique interactive experiences.’
The Indian Premier League is all set to revolutionize the social experience of cricket this season.