Top Indian IT services companies are lapping up deals in the field of sports to not just boost their revenue but also their brand. Some companies even have posts for senior leaders who are responsible for sports technology and sports sponsorship.
Just a couple of days ago, two Bengaluru based IT giants, Infosys and Wipro, announced deals in sports. While Infosys extended its partnership with Roland Garros (The French Open), Wipro announced that its dynamic digital signage solution, Wipro VisionEDGE, will power Bowling centre TV (BCTV), a new digital out-of-home television network distributed across bowling centres in the United States.
HCL Tech, last year, secured a deal from American football teams to transform the digital experience of fans. The company is also the technology partner of Cricket Australia. While country’s largest IT company, TCS has a deal with Formula 1, Tech Mahindra has similar deal with ChampTrax.
UnearthInsight estimates that the top five IT companies (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and TechM) get about $850-$1,000 million revenues from sports sector annually. Gaurav Vasu, founder, UnearthInsight, said, “Tech services firms are building cloud deployment solutions, fan engagement through IoT platforms and omnichannel fan engagement tech.”
He added, “TCS has followed the unique path of sports sponsorships (Japanese Formula Championship and Jaguar Formula E World Championship) to build solutions & win clients and has a role called head of global sports sponsorships to drive client engagements.”
As per UnearthInsight, Tech Mahindra has a VP business head for sports tech with P&L role to drive revenues from e-sports and gaming through cloud technology.
“Similarly Infosys has developed Infosys Tennis Platform part of Infosys Oncourt as Digital Innovation Partner for the Australian Open, Roland-Garros, ATP Tour and ITHF.”
Elena Christopher, chief Research Officer at HFS, said, “There are loads of these types of engagements done by IT companies. Sports-alignment is a potentially effective means for IT services firms to socialise their brand and develop further brand equity. The French Open just concluded and the Infosys name was prominently displayed in almost all coverage of the tournament.”
Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO, Everest group, said, “Typically, these deals have a promotion aspect to them. That is to say if TCS or HCLTech agrees to be a sponsor of the team/event and as part of the package they also get some work. This works well for both parties as the sports teams are high profile and work very well as a reference, the deals themselves are often discounted and as stated above part of a sponsorship deal. Not all of them are this way but most.”
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