In marketing, the cut is everything. Ask the marketing guys in your company and they'll tell you that it's their bread and butter. They'll also tell you that they don't get enough of it for the exacting, tension-filled and often degrading work they do. But that's more out of wanting to throw you off the scent of how much they're really making. Imran, a battle-scarred marketing man I had closely worked with for years, once told me his credo: “Keep your cool because it's you who have to meet your target, and not your client, who will often be rude, insulting and downright nasty until you wear him down and get your hands on his money.” This was after he had a gruelling session with a client who I thought had clearly crossed the line and deserved a poke in the snout. Imran did get the deal but not before tears welled up in his eyes from all that blinding rage he had to so assiduously swallow. HR managers will tell you that good marketeers are very ambitious people – anyone less motivated won't survive the mental beating the job entails, the everyday uncertainty, the compulsive thinking-out-of-the-box, that irrepressible need to take one last shot when all is lost. Lalit Modi is a marketing man of this mould. And the IPL is proof enough of the kind of miracle worker he can be. Consider this single achievement of his that should've alerted the BCCI of his worth and preempted any illegal thinking he might have harbored as bigger fortunes were to come his way. In 2006, way before the IPL was even thought feasible, he had sold the BCCI TV rights for a then mind-boggling amount of Rs27 billion (about $600 million) for a period of four years. The deal for the previous four years, struck by the then BCCI president, Jagmohan Dalmiya, had been for only Rs4 billion (about $89 million). Now let's put Imran in this situation. Had he brought in such a mammoth amount to his company, he'd have pounded his chest blue and howled himself hoarse from the roof until he got his due commission as stated in his job contract. But no, Lalith Modi, appears to have struck no such deal that would measure up to the kind of grand deal-making he would rock the world's cricketing establishment with from 2008 until last Sunday. Now he claims he has brought in business worth a total of about Rs400 billion (about $8.9 billion) to the IPL. A conservative five percent commission would be Rs20 billion (about $445 million). Of course a successfully negotiated sweat equity could've fetched him much more. The IPL is reportedly valued at about Rs200 billion (a little over $4 billion) today. Actual IPL revenues reported, including the estimate for 2010, totals only half of what Modi is claiming. Even then, the corresponding 5% commission would be as much as Rs10 billion (about $223 million). Interestingly, Modi's reported “financial irregularities”, including the $80 million (about Rs3.6 billion) “facilitation fee” paid by Multi Screen Media for IPL television broadcasting rights, add up to approximately this 5 percent commission amount. So, forget for a moment all the other charges of money laundering and slush money in tax havens and what do we have against Modi? An illegally obtained 5-10 percent fee just because the BCCI was not structured to give him that due “marketing reward” legally were it run like a modern-day company? This is no defense of Modi though the jury is still out on how he played the corporate game and opened up the field for a turnover of billions. It's just that he remains very much the agrressive marketing man that MBA schools strive to create. Scion of a rich business house and a management graduate from the US, he was a misfit in the BCCI, an arcane organization registered under the Societies Registration Act, unlike the Delhi District Cricket Association which is registered under the Companies Act. That's perhaps why people who understand big business, notably Kingfisher's Vijay Mallya and Reliance's Mukesh Ambani, are standing by Modi, asking for him to be given a chance to explain himself. After all, through the IPL, Modi has taken event management in India to the unfathomable next level. He alone has created the tidal wave of cash that everyone benefited from, including the hundreds of thousands of people who found lucre in IPL-related jobs and businesses. Modi could not have pulled off the scam alone. Latest reports say that sweat equity was factored into the bidding, that “a powerful politician from Maharashtra” allegedly got 5 percent and a “controversial cricket administrator got “5-10 percent.” Yet it appears that BCCI Chairman Sharad Pawar and its governing council members, including Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, whose job it was to endorse every decision of Modi's, may be exonerated. Again, how can IPL's governing council member N. Sreenivasan be allowed to have a financial stake in the IPL through part-owning the Chennai Super Kings. It's a clear case of conflict of interest yet he is absolved just because he had, unlike Modi, officially claimed a piece of the cake from the outset. No doubt Modi must pay dearly for his transgressions if they are proven. But do spare a thought for the new B-school generation of get-up-and-go marketing geniuses like him who HR managers keep pumping up with ambition and more ambition but who, like Modi, can also make that critical mistake of putting their zeal for a commission in the wrong place at the right time. – SG Feedback: [email protected] __
