After Pepsi’s exit, Coca-Cola knocks IPL doors for sponsorship

Now that PepsiCo has backed out from being the title sponsor of the Indian Premier League, arch rival Coca-Cola has initiated talks with IPL teams, grabbing the opportunity to sponsor them.

ET sources confirmed that Coca-Cola officials have already met people from Delhi Daredevils and Mumbai Indians.

It would be after a gap of three years that the maker of Coke Zero, Thums Up cola and Sprite lemon drink will be associating with IPL. In these three years, PepsiCo had the exclusive rights to team sponsorships and beverage partnerships.

Even as the reputation of IPL has gone down because of a spot-fixing and betting scandal, media buyers think that IPL will still attract big money.

"In general, IPL remains a good property for any mass national brand to be associated with. Of late, it has suffered an image setback. But as long as those issues get sorted, interests will always remain," Ashish Bhasin, chief executive, South Asia, at Dentsu Aegis Network, told ET."This year will be sort of a test year, but IPL is a strong enough brand to weather the storm," he said.

Talking of PepsiCo, in October 2015, PepsiCo had abruptly ended its IPL title sponsorship before the five-year tenure ended, stating "concerns about ethics in the IPL tournament".

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