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The Sit-Down: Mahesh Bupathi

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We have a very successful league in cricket in India. [The Indian Premier League] shows a shorter format of the game and it mixed a very big entertainment component to it.

Because of its success, I wanted to see if we could potentially do something along the lines in tennis. That’s how the idea [for the IPTL] came about. Obviously tennis is an individual sport, so it came with its own challenges, but in general I think the players love being part of a team.

Our concept has the team atmosphere. We have men, women and legends playing on the same team. I think that’s a big part of why it has been successful so far.

Cricket and tennis are two totally different sports. We shortened the format. We made it TV friendly so broadcasters can schedule it and know exactly when a match will finish. That’s the biggest challenge for broadcast because in regular tennis you never know when the match is over.

Plus we made innovations to make the game fast, with no breaks. Fans really love it.
 
This year is an Olympic year, so the schedule is already tight. Our draft is on April 13 in Dubai. We will announce the teams probably by the 15th.

We are not going to add teams this year, but next year we will again look at it. Our goal is to take this to cities that don’t get to watch world-class tennis. We are definitely looking to expand in 2017.
 
Europe and America are big markets, especially for our sponsors. We’ve got some of the biggest brands associated with us in Coca-Cola and Qatar Airways. We were on the Tennis Channel, which circulates to literally every tennis fan in the continental U.S., so we are pretty happy with it and hopefully continue to stay there.
 
The players obviously drive any property in any sport. If you have big players, the broadcasters are excited, the sponsors are excited and the fans are excited. That was a big ingredient in making this work.
 
We were live in 154 countries last year. All these deals were done separately and individually with different countries and different broadcasters.
 
It’s very difficult for tennis to evolve because of the structure at the top. But I think different events like this will keep new fans coming to the sport, which is very important.
 
We are able to play less. We are able to run down the shot clock to 20 seconds. We are able to make rules and regulations that are strict when it comes to guidelines on time. Time is what dictates TV, and TV is what dictates revenue. It’s all interconnected.
 
We have a very strong social media team. We do a lot around the events — behind the scenes and cutting some unique content with players.

[Zeven is] a multidimensional, multifaceted sports line. India doesn’t have one.

China has over the last 20 years proved that [athletic brands] can be homegrown and can be successful. They have so many brands like Li Ning, Anka, Erke and 361 that have become very successful and build a lot of value.

We don’t have one in India, and our demographic compared to China is very similar. It’s a very deep market. It’s a big growth market when it comes to sport.

We created a new category called “speedwalk” because our research showed us that 80 percent of Indian households use walking as an exercise instead of running.
 
A close friend [Hemchandra Javeri], someone who is extremely experienced in retail and set up Nike India for the first seven years it was in the country, is my partner. He’s the chairman of the company, so he runs the operation. The IPTL takes most of my time.


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