Over 100 leading brands are fiercely competing for the cricket lovers’ attention at the Indian Premier League. IPL has emerged as the world cricket’s most popular and lucrative event. No surprise, marketing experts are talking of a brand overload happening around the hyped Twenty20 tournament.

A spate of sponsorship and advertising opportunities unveiled by the IPL management include television media (Colors and Sony Max), as well as Internet (YouTube), ground sponsorships, team sponsorships and theatre rights.

According to sources with media buying firms, the third season of IPL has opened up exciting avenues for smaller advertisers as well, so the clutter will only increase. To overcome the clutter factor, advertisers are taking innovative steps such as ground activations, co-branded fan clubs and catchy advertising on YouTube. The brand rush to ride the IPL popularity wave indicates that sport marketing is now getting its due attention in India.

As already reported, Google claims a huge success in its web-casting of the IPL on YouTube. There is immense amount of euphoria over the experiment. The Internet giant has reportedly set a rather modest target of about 10 million unique viewers and 40 million cumulative hits for the 60-match long IPL league, but the targets could well be surpassed going by the trend.

Meanwhile, Airtel, among the country’s leading three Broadband players, has come up with an offer for IPL fans. They can avail of a full 1Mbps upgrade over its existing 1Mbps bandwidth to view the live telecast on YouTube sans any buffering issues. Airtel is one of the official sponsors of the IPL. Its speed bump offer will continue till April 25. There are no extra charges, though you’ll need to pay for data transfer.