MUMBAI: Despite their poor cricket performance, the Kolkata Knight Riders have emerged as the strongest IPL brand. UK based brand valuation company Intangible Business, in collaboration with MTI Consulting, have just released the IPL Brand Value Scoreboard 2009 – a valuation aimed at measuring the strengths of the right IPL Franchises

Shah Rukh Khan’s Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), with a brand value of $22 million (approximately Rs 104 crores) tops the Brand Value Table, closely followed by Delhi Daredevils, which is valued at $19 million, Chennai Super Kings at $18 million and Mukesh Ambani’s Mumbai Indians at $17 million. Last year’s winners Rajasthan Royals are at the bottom of the table with a value of $10 million.

Intangible Business international director Richard Yoxon says, "Winning games is not enough to build a successful sports brand. Teams need to engage the local community, attract star players who inspire a wide audience and develop a strong marketing communications programme."

Further explaining the rationale and methodology, MTI Consulting CEO Hilmy Cader says, "Brand values are a reflection of a brand’s ability to generate future income. It is a forward looking study that uses historic performance and future trends to predict future activity. 2008 publicly available sales data was gathered for each franchise. To determine the strength of the brands, each brand was scored on a series attributes that underpin the power and reach of the each brand. These attributes are a mixture of hard measures and soft measures of brand strength sourced from publically available information and from a qualitative panel of cricket fans from each test playing nation. Using this data, each brand was then valued using the relief-from-royalty methodology."

Significant sums have been invested in acquiring the team franchises and the race is on to capture the hearts and minds of cricket fans to develop a strong club culture modelled on the success of the world’s most popular sports brands. While the playing squads will change and the success of each team will fluctuate over time, the brand is the constant that unites supporters and is ultimately responsible for driving the long-term commercial sustainability and success of the IPL franchises.