IPL: Hype emerges as the biggest winner
The Indian Premium League (IPL) cricket tournament has been a resounding success from day one, receiving record television viewership and setting the cash bells ringing for BCCI, Set Max and everyone else associated with it. And with its success, it has brought into focus the role of Mr.Hype. Commentators, analysts of all types, discerning cricket lovers and a growing breed of cricket-haters are unanimous in their opinion that it is not cricket that is the biggest winner at the inaugural club-cricket tournament, but the loud & obnoxious gentleman called Hype.
A sell-out crowd has cheered at every venue, spectacular display of big hype heralding a new phase in the game's history of super-hyped cricket. At the end of this tournament, no one will have any reason to complain. It wouldn't matter much which team would lift the inaugural tournament trophy, since everyone agrees that hype would emerge as the winner of the tournament.
Meet Mr.Hype.
Hype is cooked using mixture of big money and over-the-top media coverage, adding plenty of Shahrukh Khan flavor. In other countries too, the recipe is mostly similar, the only change being that flavor changes with the geographical location. In UK, Princess Diana was the hottest flavor used to generate hype till she crashed to her death and was replaced by David Beckham and Posh Victoria. In US, flavors keep changing with change of seasons. In India, for quite a few years, Amitabh Bachchan was the favorite flavor of hype makers, but with his spice-n-sugar ingredients reducing with his growing age, Shahrukh Khan replaced him as India's no.1 flavor used for making hype.
The power of Hype
Hype has the ability to program people's brains and fine-tune them to hype-generators frequency. Too much of hype results in disablement of reasoning & critical thinking faculties leading to blind acceptance of the hyped product.
Anand Prakash, 60, a retired government officer from the pink city was not much of a cricket fan preferring to spend most of his time reading newspapers. But with front page newspaper coverage of IPL tournament, he gave up his apathy of cricket and now spends his evenings glued to Set Max channel keenly following the fortunes of Rajasthan Royals. "If IPL is front page news material then it must be important enough to be followed" said Mr Prakash, when asked about his new found love for pyjama cricket.
"IPL is hot! Everyone is watching it...so how can I ignore it?" asks Manohar Bhattacharya, 27, a resident of Kolkotta and a die-hard football fan. "I'm honored that SRK selected Kolkotta as his team, despite having no relation with our city. Its a great privilege for Kolkottans to host King Khan and I feel proud to be a fan of Kolkotta Knight Riders " added Manohar
"I Loveeee Shahrukh" screamed over-excited Rinku Gupta, 19 year old fan of character Raj, played by SRK in the movie 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayene' and after a pause, she added "I Loveeee Kolkatta Knight Riders"
To summarize, hype has the power to generate three types of thoughts:
a) If important people on television channels and newspapers are excited about something, that something must be worth a lot.
b) If everyone around me is following something, that something must be worth a lot.
c) If Shahrukh Khan is promoting something, that something must be worth a lot.
The result of these thoughts - If something is worth a lot, I must accept it, feel excited about it, keenly follow it and enjoy it.
Those who don't hype..
Subhash Chandra, CEO of Zee telefilms and founder of India's first league cricket tournament, ICL, admits that his version of club-cricket was a miserable flop because of the missing vital ingredient - hype. "The sum of hundred crores which I had alloted for ICL was too less to buy the whore called hype. I couldn't purchase loyalties of a single top-ranking Indian cricketer. I did negotiate with SRK to generate hype, but he demanded all of the hundred crores I had alloted for the tournament. In hindsight, I wish I had acceded the demands of Shahrukh Khan. Hype would have followed him and even BCCI would have been forced to negotiate with me"
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