Sports
Soccer brand summit on 7 October in UK
MUMBAI: On 7 October, brand and sponsorship directors will gather at Chelsea FC in the UK as part of the Leaders in Football, an international football business event for the inaugural Brand Leaders Summit.
The day will start with a closed “sponsor only” forum for 50 brand leaders to allow the exchange of ideas, challenges and concepts in a private, peer to peer environment.
Following this there will be an open programme of speakers and best practice seminars from figures at the helm of some of the world’s most iconic sports brands.
Kicking off the programme will be NBA Deputy Commissioner and COO Adam Silver. He will explain how the NBA has embraced media and technology to drive the globalisation of the brand and what the digital future holds for rights holders.
The day will also include a session by marketing director Uefa Philippe Le Floc’h and Heineken Activation global manager Hans Erik Tuijt on the Champions League story, one of the most successful sports brands in the world.
Also taking the stage will be NJ Nets CEO Brett Yormark, who will explain how his NBA franchise drives customer loyalty and Peter Moore, President, EA sports, who will outline the future relationship between brands, new media and consumers.
Rounding off the programme will be Castrol Global Brand Director Des Johnson, and Diageo Global Category Director Steve Cumming who will look at how to use sponsorship to connect the brand to the fans.
Sports
Diamond Raja gets the Sunrisers dancing in Netflix’s latest IPL campaign film
Sunil Grover’s beloved character pulls the Hyderabad squad into an alternate universe in the newest instalment of Netflix’s Chill Like a Champion series
Mumbai: The final over is done, the bats are racked and the Sunrisers Hyderabad dressing room is ready for its real entertainment to begin. Netflix, the official entertainment partner of the Sunrisers, has dropped the latest film in its Chill Like a Champion campaign, and it is loud, daft and very deliberate fun.
The film opens with the squad unwinding after a long day on the field by tuning into Netflix, where they stumble into Diamond Raja, Sunil Grover’s scene-stealing avatar from The Great Indian Kapil Show. One moment they are slumped on sofas; the next, they have been pulled bodily into Diamond Raja’s world, all high-energy choreography, theatrical excess and a custom, lyrically reworked version of his signature song, Slowly Slowly. The rewrite doubles as a tongue-in-cheek nudge to slow down, switch off and enjoy the moment. Cricketers Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head are all swept along for the ride.
The film is stuffed with winks at fan-favourite Netflix titles, including Pushpa and the K-drama When Life Gives You Tangerines, threading cricket’s biggest downtime into the streamer’s broader content universe.
Grover, for his part, seems to have relished every second of it. “Netflix has certainly surprising ways to inspire and excite you as an artist,” he said. “This collaboration brought together the best of two worlds, cricket and entertainment. Coming together with the stellar cricketers Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head was such a delightful experience. Getting to bring Diamond Raja into this mix was an interesting way to make this even more special. It is playful, happy, it is dramatic, and it shows how entertainment can completely pull you into another world. Just like what Netflix does.”
The Chill Like a Champion campaign spans several films, each catching cricket’s biggest names in their post-match, unheroic best, hooked to a screen and very much off the clock. The Sunrisers film is the latest addition to the series.
Netflix describes itself as one of the world’s leading entertainment services, offering TV series, films, games and live programming across genres and languages, available anytime, anywhere.
Diamond Raja is back, the Sunrisers are dancing and, if Netflix has its way, so is the rest of India.
