LaLiga, Spain’s top division football league opened its office in India in September 2016. Recognizing the appetite and passion India has for football, LaLiga has been working with fans, stakeholders and other members in the fraternity to further develop it in the country. Under the leadership of Mr. Jose Antonio Cachaza, Managing Director, LaLiga India, LaLiga has undertaken several initiatives in India to bring the Spanish league closer to its fans. It recently announced its tie-up with Dream 11 the Fantasy League.
MediaNews4U.com caught up with Jose Antonio Cachaza – Managing Director, LaLiga for a chat on LaLiga’s growth and the recent partnership Dream 11 the Fantasy Sports Platform.
Excerpts:
Take me through LaLiga’s journey in India.
We have been putting up with seven operations in India three years ago. The reason was, it was considered one of the markets thinking in terms of the future of legacy brand and also thinking on the future of the new economy and the present and especially future economy. So we open the operations at the end of 2016.
The journey has been step by step and now we are starting to take some of the results of the investment we’re doing. We first have to get a grip on the market. To understand the market, especially in the case of India.
Basically, We always give a digital significance to everything we do. So, from a direct strategy in social media, where we went from 300,000 followers three years ago to almost 4 million now, and that requires a lot of work a lot of investment. We have about 1010 people team, between Madrid and here in Delhi working in social media for new markets and that translates to publishing, doing local content, publishing it in local languages. Our greatest moment was when we signed the broadcast agreement with Facebook, historic broadcast deal with Facebook to telecast all LaLiga matches live in India only on Facebook, which can be accessed for free by fans all over the country.
Our focus is on having plans to watch our matches through digital ways, and we are leading the way to others. The biggest surprise was the signing of Rohit Sharma as LaLiga’s Brand Ambassador.
When you ventured into India, India was not considered to be a great football nation, other than the few pockets of Northeast east, Kolkata, Goa and Kerala. What was the reason for choosing India as a market?
Well, you can look at it in from two perspectives one pure business know so if you ask the manager of any foreign company in India, why you’re here… they will tell you I come on to our 1.4 billion people, which can be very misleading but you have a consuming plus that probably somewhere between 203 hundred million So, that’s a huge market, okay. So but that can apply if even if I was selling costumes, no. So let’s look at football. Cricket is a religion in India. Cricket will always be the number one sport in India, that’s out of our contention and we don’t want to get into competing with that. Even on television Cricket garners the highest number of viewers, Kabaddi league is the second league. If you add up the audience of all football leagues, football is clearly second sport on TV so that tells your story. Second story – it’s true that football in India is seeing a growth in the Metros recently.
The FIFA World Cup under 17 World Cup was a huge hit among Indians, also the other European teams, we are witnessing that a huge number of audience in India are using the App to watch Real Madrid -Barcelona Champions League matches. So, I think it’s a cultural thing, personally I relate to the overall situation of India, India is open into the world and you have this generation, many of them are Europe or US-educated and they are proud to be Indians wanted to do big in India, but they are so looking outside. In a way the growth of football among the middle class is a way of connecting with the new India that comprises of these young people.
What is the kind of investment you have done in India?
Oh, well. That’s a good question. We are making a huge investment in terms of our force and resources. So we don’t take these it’s more a soft investment know in the sense that our goal is to be the brand and what we sell, if I put it in a funny way, our product is 22 young guys running on shorts after the round piece of leather over grass, and this happens in Spain. This is what we are selling actually the very basics. The magic is that we are selling these to the world through TV, through games which can be a fantasy league also watching on the net TV through Facebook. This is what we’re doing and we are not selling it in a passive way. We are selling emotions, we are selling entertainment in a softer approach.
Marketing Initiatives by LaLiga to grow the game in India?
LaLiga Football Schools – an intensive grassroots programme launched in 2018 which has impacted over 10,000 students in 14 cities across India already. Through this programme, licensed Spanish coaches impart technical training to the young students and coaches in India.
LaLiga Football Schools Annual Scholarship – every season, top-performing students from the LaLiga Football Schools programme will be selected to go to Spain for an immersive experience to train with a top LaLiga club. In May 2019, 4 students were selected to train with CD Leganes.
Association with Sevilla FC, Celta Vigo and Real Betis for the LaLiga Football Schools programme in Pune, Delhi and Bangalore respectively
LaLiga has signed Rohit Sharma as its Brand Ambassador, what is connect between Football and Cricket?
LaLiga, today, announced the first-ever non-footballer brand ambassador in the 90-year history of the Spanish league, Indian ace cricketer, Rohit Sharma. LaLiga and Rohit Sharma together to grow the LaLiga fantasy league, that’s an important partnership. I think it’s good for the growth of LaLiga and also for the growth of the number of fans. This is just another step in the path we are taking. Cricket is religion in India and Football is religion in Spain, in a sense symbolically it is a way of connecting the two countries and two religions. I mean, symbolically I like to see it that way. Fans here love cricket, it is their number one sport. We want to grow with that audience and make football as their second sport, also to make LaLiga as their international favourite League. Summarizing that the game and also if you want to look at short term I think it can help us to increase our brand awareness right now and to increase the audience we have for our matches. So it is applied across the board in India.
Girona FC in India chose India for its pre-season matches, any reasons?
For the first time, a top European club played pre-season matches in India in July 2018 in Kochi. They played matches against Kerala Blasters from ISL and Australian A-League side Melbourne City FC. As I said India is an important market for us, and one of the ways to promote our brand is to bring clubs to break here and bring the passion of real football not just on TV or on the on digital but on ground. This leads us to bring the real thing that’s at the end of what the fans want to want to see, that was the first step it worked really well for us. We were very happy about the experience, both directors and employees were amazed at how they were treated by the Kerala fans. We now want to get more clubs here, and it’s an important marketing tool for us.
Do you plan to have matches across India and not just in the pockets, which love Football?
That’s not an easy question to answer. The problem is basically clubs have really short windows of time where they can travel so usually is the second half of July to Mid-August. In India the monsoon is at its peak during this time in most part of the country and it is difficult to hold matches. For us at LaLiga, it’s not that easy to choose a venue, the answer is, it will be either one of these locations or one of the big metro areas. We have to find a balance between locations where you have a good fan base, and also it’s an attractive place for sponsors.
The recent tie-up with DREAM11
That’s another step in the same direction, as I was telling you that digital is at the core of our strategy not just all over the world but here in India as well and India is a mobile first country. so the concentration of digital. Right now you cannot associate, mobile I mean digital only to mobile, as many viewers are watching the matches on the big screen by using the mobile to send the Chromecast to TV. The Dream 11 tie-up is another way to connect to our fans as India is not just Mobile. India loves to play fantasy leagues and that’s really important so it’s a good step for La Liga and I hope it is also for DREAM11.
Future Plans?
We need to keep growing, both in digital and we need to keep growing our audience. Commercially we want to bring more partners on board. Also, we want, to bring another LaLiga team to India.
