Cricket Talk | Tuhin Mishra on Baseline Ventures and all things player management
Tuhin Mishra Unplugged - SportsCafe Exclusive
|One of the top dogs in the player and event management sector, Baseline Ventures have carved a niche for themselves like a very few have, in Indian sports. A roster as impressive as it gets, Baseline Ventures proudly recognises itself as a muliti-faceted domain, excelling on all grounds.
The engine room of the venture is Tuhin Mishra, Managing Director & Co-Founder at Baseline Ventures Pvt Ltd, who has seen the product rise to become one of the leading sports marketing, entertainment and a brand licensing firm across Singapore, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Los Angeles. To understand the changing dynamics of sports management in the world impacted by Coronavirus, SportsCafe caught up with Mishra for a rather detailed conversation. We bring to you a definitive perspective on player management in the current climate as well as the vision behind Baseline Ventures. Welcome to the fourth edition of Cricket Talk!
SportsCafe: Hello Tuhin. Extremely happy that you join us in this discussion. Letās address the most important thing of our times. How has the Coronavirus thing impacted Baseline and the entire sports management industry as a whole?
Tuhin: Thank you. You know, since the time this Corona thing started in March, we knew for a fact that this would be for a long time. Now four and a half months down the line things are starting to look better, I would say. Obviously the IPL is going to start from September 19. But in this period for almost four and a half months, things have become slow and a lot of things have gone to the back burner. We manage a lot of athletes, we are responsible for a lot of sponsorships that happen across sporting leagues, sporting events, So all those things were put on hold. In terms of endorsements and sponsorships for the events, yes they were carrying on but there were also some clients who were struggling because the economy as a whole had come to a halt and because of that we had to re-look at certain terms and conditions. There were certain delays in payments and we had to accept and live with that fact because it has been a tough time for everyone concerned.
SC: The IPL is here and we might look at a future of sporting events with the new normal. However, Tuhin, do you think the entire sporting ecosystem will thrive once again in the near future?
Tuhin: I will not say that the entire ecosystem will come on its feet but yes there will be certain elements that will operate at a certain level. Some might operate at 90% some might operate at 60%. But something is definitely better than nothing. Secondly I am quite sure that it will lift the spirits of the people. A lot of times it is also sentiments because the people get scared and it is a natural human tendency because of the problems around. Sometimes problems have a solution and hence we are hoping that there may be vaccines and treatments which come and people can start freely going out. But I am sure that if IPL and other sporting events start in India, the perspective of many things towards life will become slightly better and it will also give to a lot of elements in the ecosystem. So it wonāt be at a hundred percent level but it will be significant.
SC: The word ānew normalā has been the buzz of the town and in the era of work from home and social distancing, is there a possibility that a completely different avenue for player management would come into the fore? How are you envisioning this at Baseline?
Tuhin: Every problem has an opportunity with it and we at Baseline Ventures have always concentrated on social media engagements for our athletes. Also, during lockdown, we started a very successful series called āDouble Troubleā with Smriti and Jemimah and this was again a product of what has happened during Corona. Yes, we had a plan of creating our own content around sports and itās just that Corona happened and you know we kind of started the whole show in April. Because this concept had novelty and both hosts came as a breath of fresh air. They came across as natural people who spoke to achievers and they also themselves are achievers.
SC: Smriti Mandhana, PV Sindhu, Jemimah Rodigues, Joshna Chinappa, Deepika Kumari, Radha Yadav, Shafali Verma, and Aditi Chauhan to name among the lots. Baseline Ventures have an impressive roster of female athletes in the country and some big-time achievers as well. How proud are you about that, Tuhin?
Tuhin: I must say with full humility that Baseline currently has the best womenās athlete roster in the country. And we have strongly believed that women athletes are big achievers in their own field and even if you see the last Olympics, the two medals that we got were both women and the third who came close to winning a medal was also a woman. We want to set an example and we have done some amazing work for our women athletes. We listen to Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah, Shefali and the list goes on. And we have shown that at Baseline, we have marketed our athletes well and we can see that there is a market and it has to be sold well. It has a kind of direct and indirect form of help to other female athletes also even if they are not with us.
SC: Whatā are the challenges involved to market the athletes who donāt have any sort of visibility on Television and the athletes who play a less marketable sport?
Tuhin: That will always be a challenge because there are some sports which are not Olympic sports, there are some sports which don't come on TV as well. But that doesn't mean their achievements are any way lesser. Whether it is Sourav Ghoshal, Deepika Kumari or even the shooters. Itās not that their sports are coming on TV but they bring laurels to our country and thatās where we tell the advertisers that thatās where we need to look at. Cricketers are visible on TV but not every brand that the cricketer endorses is visible on TV. So in a way you are taking the visibility that the player is getting on TV and trying to superimpose it with your brand values and try to make a story out of it. So thatās where sponsors and marketers also need to understand that you can get value for your money when you are looking for global achievers. Be it Sourav, Pankaj Advani who is a world champion in a sport across both billiards and snooker.
SC: Coming to cricket, when you sign a player on the basis of pedigree form a very young age, it has to be your intuition. However, does the risk factor of those particular players not garnering some success in theĀ future play in your head?
Tuhin: For us, whenever we invest in a young talent like Priyam Garg or Yashasvi Jaiswal or even a Prithvi Shaw, obviously you take a calculated guess that these players will do well down the line. You are also looking at whether these players can create an identity for themselves because, at the end of the day, every player who achieves something will become a brand and you think whether this brand will stand out in the crowd. For Prithvi, when we had signed him, he was not even the captain of the U19 team. So we signed him before that. Thatās what we call an X-factor. There are times where we refuse and not sign people because it is our gut call that things may not work. Those are the marketing calls that you take when you look at certain people.Ā
SC: Apart from player management, Baseline have carved a niche for themselves in the Sports Sponsorship vertical like securing āYep meā as the Title Sponsor of the West Indies cricket Team for ICC World Cup 2015 and getting Confident Group as the main team sponsor for the Sri Lanka Cricket team in the ICC World Twenty 20 India 2016. How have your experiences in that field been like so far?
Tuhin: Those were just the opportunities that we had seen and thus we went and approached the boards and we represented them for those ICC events. We also work a lot in sponsorship space be it the IPL where we work with CSK, RCB and with discussion with other teams. We work in Kabaddi space, football space and we also have our Pro-Volleyball league. So you know those are the sponsorship vertical which we focus on and something which is significant to our business.Ā
SC: These are some lovely insights. To wrap it up, Tuhin, can you please take us through the journey of your venture and how much of challenges you had to face in the process?
Tuhin: When we started Baseline in 2014, it was done with a lot of passion and we had very passionate people on board and a good part about the whole team was we didn't need to reinvent the wheel because we all have been doing the same thing for other companies for years for our bread and butter. Obviously, there were lots of learnings that we brought with us like how to run a company, what are the things that we need to be looked at, how costs can be minimized which helps firms in the long run and also what culture we want to have in our company, because these things might be intangible once but are very important to drive a company forward. So what we have done till now, it has been satisfying but there is a lot more to do as well.
