 over here well we all know that some of the biggest artists are now performing at various sports events revising their original tracks and helping launch various seasons with their performances and that is our next topic as well feeding the superfan appetite it's an intersection of sports and music and I would now like to invite our moderator Mr. Ravi Krishnan, Chairperson so let's hear it for the gentlemen over here friends and we also have a panelist over here we have Lydia Boutello EVP brand experience and events star India welcome ma'am joining them we have Jiggy George the founder dream theater keep it going keep it going come on friends we have a couple of more panelists over here we have Mr. Indranil Blah CEO Mumbai city FC Mr. Vivek Nayar CMO Mahendra and Mahendra and Mr. Mohit Joshi MD Havas media welcome everyone thank you so much the panel is all yours ready here great thanks everyone it's the first time I've done a panel where there's more people on stage and there are in the audience so hopefully we can drag some people in at some point so I think we just jump straight in we're going to do a shorter version because everything's delayed and I want to just say that music permeates sport in many different ways I think sometimes we don't even consider how much it is involved it is integrated into sports from anthems to opening ceremonies to half-time ceremonies like the Super Bowl to performance I mean you think about Rocky and the theme song and how that's used for training and then it's been actually created into sport IMG which company I used to work for many years actually represented the dance sport Foundation which Mark McCormack saw as a sport and actually was actually they were vying for Olympic status I probably think it's a good thing they didn't get it but nevertheless you know music is ubiquitous in in sport nothing that's a it's a really interesting panel that I think that these guys have decided to put together and you've got some great people on stage who have experience in these areas but we're not going to do introductions because they're up on behind us but I'm going to start with Vivek Vivek Mahindra has you know been involved in sport for many many years in many different ways as a sponsor as an owner probably more prevalent as an owner now than before tell me how you've leveraged music specifically to drive both the performance on on the field on the track but also the commercial viability of your properties so I'm going to talk about Mahindra's involvement with an international motorsport called Formula E so I'm sure most people here would be aware of formula one formula E is the electric motorsport it's the fastest growing motorsport international motorsport in the world today half a billion people sort of engaging with this sport and Mahindra racing has a team we are one of the founder members right now we are in season five now music where does music fit in you know the the the time gap between two races is about a month so the race goes to 12 cities across the world New York Paris Berlin Hong Kong Santiago there's a gap of one month between races and between seasons there's a gap of about three four months and you know we were racking our brains as to what do we do to continue fan engagement in between these gaps and you know the idea that we picked on was music and we said you know how can we leverage music to create content that we put out on social media to engage with our fans and I will show you that video in a moment but basically we got our drivers Nick Heidfeld who's an ex-formula one driver and Jerome embrosio again ex-formula one we got them to India we got them to dance to a Bollywood Bhangra beat in a fictitious Bollywood film set we put that video out and that just went it took a life of its own and when you see the video you will understand that from the first video then we we got on to getting other teams dancing to the beat the management of formula e dancing to the beat and then of course fans dancing to the beat so we created a series of four videos and I want to show you a 30 second clip just to explain what I'm talking about can I have the clip please I think you missed the beginning of the video but basically you had the the drivers dancing the team principles dancing from other teams you have the boss of formula e Andrea God who's on that video and we've got 20 million plus views so far 50% of them from Europe and America and you know we what started out as a simple idea I think has taken a life of its own so you know that's one example of how we've used music to engage fans it's I think it's really interesting for a couple of things fan engagement is the holy grail of sport the thing with sport is whether an event a team or a league the fan are really engaged when the race is on or the matches on think about IPL IPL was on for six weeks no one talked about anything else for the next 46 weeks no one will even talk about it so how you can engage the fan when the sport is not happening is critical to all of people who invest in sport because if you can get through that 10 15 20% more revenue you can change your business I think what's also interesting about what you've done is exporting I think India in a contemporary way you know I think one of the opportunities with music is it allowed because music is is linked to language but it was also independent of language and it gives us a chance to export contemporary India which is something I'm really into when India is more than snake charmers and elephants and I think there's an opportunity through things like your association with formula E to show the world what we are becoming as opposed to what we were and I think that's really really great talking about fan engagement in Daniel you've done something not dissimilar with with Mumbai City and maybe you can talk a little bit about about that yeah so one of the first things we did Mumbai City is a five-year-old brand and one of the first things we realized is unfortunately Mumbai is not really a football-centric city so how to bridge that gap with our fans and get them to associate with the team so while the traditionalists were not too happy about it we said that we needed an anthem and typically football's always been associated with music especially with a lot of chance so we had we came up with an anthem which was composed by Pritam the composer worked really well for us and you know what we realized is you need an emotional connect with fans the two ways of sort of reaching out to fans for an emotional connect us both in music and what better way to sort of bring them all together through you know through an anthem it's worked well for us and it's something that keeps us relevant so if you attend any Mumbai City games at the beginning of the game at halftime and at the end we play the anthem and today we've sort of realized that we've got a small but very you know strong select core of fans around 500 of them who know the lyrics and chant it every time the players sort of enter the field so again while traditionally you don't ideally want Bollywood to sort of in intersect with the fans you have to do what's right for the fans right and you have to see what sort of works for them and for us music and Bollywood has worked well for football in the Nissan market that we have I don't think you know leveraging we've talked about this many times leveraging popular culture as a way of shedding light or propagating things that perhaps have been tertiary but you want to make primary is a great way to start but it you know this leads me to the point that we're talking about more hit and you know India's become a much more diverse country from a consumption point of view probably in the last 10 years I mean we opened up it opened up maybe 25 years ago or whatever but really that the change in consumption patterns has happened maybe the last 10 and we talked about now the increasing interest in what we're calling independent music as opposed to Bollywood music and and maybe you can talk about that a little because I know that's something close to your heart sure sure of it in fact you know the I personally feel there's no question that music goes very well with sports with passion in fact being from Hawas we've done enough studies in with Hawas sports and entertainment where we've tried to match the passions with various kind of music but the problem that I personally see in India that music is significantly under leveraged just to give you some numbers you know if you look at the the the entertainment industry in India you know the overall music and entertainment industry it's about 1.6 trillion INR out of which music is just 14 million not even 1% and out of this 80% is coming out of Bollywood and if I was to ask people over here you know which is that one anthem that you remember for a sport in India can can somebody tell me I remember Chakde Chakde Chakde India you know and that is being played in in most of the forums whenever India is doing well why that's something that came from Bollywood and it is it is I'm not saying it's bad and before that before Chakde happened there was something that Lagan had done bar bar haa Bolo yaar haa that became the you know the passion music for fans and and a cricket and this was for hockey but it is being leveraged across ports the problem is while that is good because there is so much of dominance of of Bollywood independent music and independent you know situations are not coming up and I can say it because I go and try to sell music to clients and I see how difficult it is yeah I think that's maybe true but I think firstly I think Bollywood gets both a good and a bad name sometimes I mean at the end of the day it's it's sort of an amazing force in many ways I also think that there's a much that the or that the consumer is much more open to other forms of music but it takes time there's going to be an inflection point it's moving incrementally now there'll be a point at which it moves exponentially and you know several including your old company are investing in that now and I think as a consumer changes you'll see that so I think it's worth sticking with for sure and you know I think maybe some of the people here can be catalysts in that you know but I don't blame anyone for riding on the back of Bollywood because why wouldn't you it's a business we're all in business here ultimately and people are doing this I mean it's art but it's also commerce and that and to sit at the junction of creative and commerce it's about my point is because of that new music is not coming the way it should be coming in India well that's the whole problem it's probably not coming as fast as you would like it but it's coming you know and I think there's a push and a pull factor yeah Lydia you know you talk about you handle some great big events opening ceremonies for ISL and Kabadi and many other things you know we saw many years ago Shakira perform at the opening ceremony I think FIFA was it in South Africa you think there's a chance we're going to see an Indian artist perform at the opening ceremony of a global event I think that's not too far away except that if you're telling me or asking me if it's a musician who's managing to do that I'm yeah any form of artist of course I I think the kind of artists that are now represented from Deepika to Priyanka to all of these people who are performers from both acting as well as singing there is definitely a big chance for that to happen and opening ceremonies even in India were not that big until IPL started doing it and then I think football naturally sort of took the format that we used to do internationally and said that okay we should but obviously Bollywood will stand out or Indian film industry will come up a lot more because that's what the masses would like to see rather than niche you know bands performing per se and that also sometimes works with for example we've had the opening ceremony where we had a Salman Khan performing in Kerala while he might be a great artist across all of India but in Kerala the appeal was not as much right so it really depends on where you hold these events and what sort of your audience is looking for because there are two levels for us one is the broadcast media and one is on ground and if the on ground doesn't feel the energy sometimes that translates very badly on television as well so to answer your question about in our artist performing definitely I think that is huge scope for that to happen on a global event as you talk about the IPL and I was lucky enough to be involved from the beginning pretty much and a lot of the artists that perform especially in the early days were all international you know they had snow patrol and various other I think Katy Perry came down one year and you know I guess my question is is that is there a bridge phase where you put Indian artists with international artists to get them abroad and perform at international events that's what I would like to see at some point in Indian artists headlining at Super Bowl I mean it's potentially not out of the question right definitely not and I think there's serious potential in that and India is a market itself for any sport today and in the need would say this because there's international football teams who are keen on interested in investing in India so I don't see why that shouldn't happen or rather I think very soon it should I'm Jiggy you come from an interesting side you come from the licensing and merchandising side which is a huge part of the industry depending on the sport bigger or smaller but very important and a great revenue stream and especially from a fan engagement point of view that's what one thing if Wimbledon's on next week two weeks of the air one talks about Wimbledon 50 weeks of the year no one talks about Wimbledon if they can sell more towels and t-shirts and other things in those 50 weeks changes their bottom line how important is music to non music events to drive merchandise so to sports you've done FIFA World Cups you've done under 17 World Cups you've done a lot of sport what role can music play in that non-engaged period to help you drive more sales Wow and that was a curveball and that was one of the questions sport of music I had to throw sure that'll take 13 minutes so we've got 13 that's why I want to finish up with you see music would play a really important role I mean we have a brand called prowl which is a sporting brand and that would be a good example of what we did where we intersected music in its promotion so usually when you promote a brand you would go ahead and spend marketing dollars in promoting it and what we decided to do is create an an anthem with it it was it was created by Arman and Amal Malik so Bollywood again and we partnered with T series got the song up and overnight it was about 45 million views that kind of scale and how does that link back to merchandise is the fact that the number of people who went on the Instagram page the number of people who landed up pre purchase exponentially grew so I think there's a big link between music and and if you go back Ravi in terms of one of the sessions I was sitting in earlier one of the musicians spoke about the fact that I hope that we don't make money after we are dead I look at most of the guys who are making money is I'm sorry to say but a lot of them are making money after they're dead like the Bob Marley estate this time when I was in the US I'm just looking at the money that they're making with coffee marijuana based products and that's massive half of the Beatles making their money right now as we speak with Paul's alive and Ringo is okay I think I'd rather make money when I'm asleep than dead correct correct that's really the goal I think it's interesting you talk about prowl and one of the things I can't stand actually is a businessman is profitless volume right you know there's so many businesses now they just talk about how many downloads or how many but there's no money right I mean there's so many business burning in the pursuit of what I call profitless volume so you have 45 million views but commercial success of the business yeah it does it converts straight to the amount of sales that is possible potentially to do if you have just inducing trial itself is a big thing now yeah and taking another route would be far more challenging but we've done a whole bunch of merchandise around sport and what I was saying is that it does both because most people are thinking of it just as a revenue stream but it does a lot from a fan engagement perspective so FIFA with a World Cup and in India specifically out of the three tick marks I think two of them exist in India one is that people know brands and people know music and teams and the second is that there is a consuming class but what's not intersecting is really retail so between the first World Cup that happened in Brazil and the second one in Russia we doubled sales but that was just based on the fact that the number of retail points have increased Neil you were shaking your head when I talked about profitless volume so what's your view on that I think from football point of view a long long away from talking about whether it's profits or profitless volumes but I think the interesting point here is that you know everyone all of us on the panel have used Bollywood to an extent and I completely agree with Mohit I think it's for brands like let's say Mumbai city it's high time that we give independent artists an opportunity we couldn't do it early on because you have to build the brand and if you're building the brand you look at broad basing it that happens either through cricket or Bollywood but I think after a certain point of time you start looking at how you can create a unique brand and one of the plans that we have in Mumbai city is to have music a lot more integrated and using independent artists right and you can see brands doing that today if you look at you know some of the panelists who've been here in this conference they're independent artists and there's an audience for that and something that we are looking at very seriously over the next couple of years or so right Vivek Mahindra has sporting properties like formulae you have a music property like the Mahindra Blues Festival which you do weekends now in Chicago and various places do you cross pollinate at all you know I think it comes back to what is the objective so I mean if I like look at blues I you know blues is the genre which is unique I mean how do I intersect sports and music there I don't know but as I said in in formulae it made sense to do the integration that we did you know so it all boils down to the objective I mean there are sports events which go on for three four hours maybe you don't need music to play a role there but there are sports events which are short format right like the NFL game is probably a total of one hour the formulae race is a total of one hour so you want to extend engagement on that day for your fans who are coming in music is a great way to do it so formulae does it all the time so before the race happens there's usually a local band who's playing in the formulae village so people are engaged people having fun families are having a great time it's not just the lads it's you know broad basing the appeal though the whole family can come and have a fun day so I think it depends on what the objective is and some places music and sports can go together other places it may not more hit as someone who's in media you know and if you look at what's having in social media everyone's talking about user-generated content and the consumer being the journalist etc to what extent can we leverage user-generated content to bring music and sports together do you think just yesterday I was I mean you're a singer for example you're gonna go do karaoke now yesterday only we were I was at a client's meeting and we were presenting an idea they were associating with cricket and we said you know can we create a step for for you for that particular you know song and and for that particular sport and we presented a few you know a few scratches and then we realized that something like this could become very very viral you know imagine if you have created a unique step a unique whatever you know mnemonic kind of a thing for a brand with a particular association with with a particular sport and people start doing it on TikTok you know people have started imitating ads people have started doing all those things on TikTok and on social media so it's all about the power of that content if the content is very very strong the way we saw you know over here the virability is humongous and people today have enough and more time energy and inclination to to to make it viral it's just about you know it has to I understood Lidia last question for you and then I have a question I remember when we started the IPL the opening ceremony was on the same day as the first game then it moved out to being independent I'm not sure where it is now but can they be can these things be standalone or do you think they need to be juxtaposed to the start of the tournament itself especially in sports like football and kabaddi and non cricket sports so we did a lot of research on this piece earlier often one is the sport itself in India because of the space that we have these sporting events if it's a cricket stadium versus a football stadium the turf is an important aspect of you know it's act of scent you don't touch the turf in India we don't have the infrastructure a to sort of manage that and hence it can't be as engaging as what you see abroad where on the day of the match can of the match that you can do these ceremonies however having said that the intention of an opening ceremony has always been to bring in the most eyeballs to continue from watching the opening ceremony to the sport and hence it doesn't serve the purpose when you do that a day before as a standalone and I think IPL has tried that many a time for football we debated that a lot because we wanted to keep it in another stadium and then finally did and I must say that from the time IPL came on star we were insistent that as a broadcaster as well as on ground that is far more engaging if it's on the day often it continues to go into the sport so yes we do you know sometimes in India specifically often they give more importance to ceremony and not maybe the sport but we've changed that around and we try and work around that atmosphere but it's very important for the ceremonies to happen on the day of and rather a standalone because concerts can always happen and they will continue to happen because that's not the intention this is not a concert this is not that this is about bringing those eyeballs to the game so the intention is to bring in people who are not hardcore fans who might come in on the back of a ceremony to then finally watch the sport great I agree with you by the way I think we have time for one you want to say something I just wanted to add a comment that I think one of the best examples of how someone is leveraging music performances in the middle of an event is half-time Super Bowl and these videos are available on YouTube I would encourage you go and see the video for Lady Gaga or Kate Perry performing at half-time it just blows you away with the scale of the performance the props they use the costumes the choreography it's I think inspirational to see the kind of stuff they do and maybe someday we'll see that kind of stuff happening in our country as well I think it would be unreal happens but the cost of advertising is really high so you guys are going to put your hands deep in your pocket if it's going to happen we probably have time for one or two questions if anyone wants to ask any questions of anyone go over there thank you actually I would like to start with thanking Mr. Joshi for getting the point of independent artist and their opportunity to present their music or their talent for the for the given thing specifically to the sports well my question is actually to every one of you guys you guys are quite influential and you guys are powerful and what do you think we can do about it rather than taking not taking Bollywood completely out but I would like for example Chuck they would always get a million or a billion hits on YouTube anyways so by feeding the rich we are not doing anything better so if an independent artist can be given an opportunity maybe via some contests or maybe like if Mumbai FC if a musician is a hardcore football fan the way he will portray his music through that would be more deeper than someone who is just composing for the sake of it because music is emotion and I think what fans would chant his emotion and not like just some nice music so I think some have somewhere we need to put like you know put something across would there be is there any plan or is there any ideas which you guys think can be done so just to answer your question it's not necessary that you only use independent musicians for composing something because that's a very limited space when it comes to that it'll be one anthem whereas we what we do for fan engagement often is that we sort of engage with musicians to play before the game starts at least to the crowd in the stadium so that sort of gets them a little bit of exposure there as well so we do try in various ways but yes it might not be so rampantly available on YouTube and Instagram and for it to go viral but on ground in the stadium yes there are fan engagement concerts that we do try and do with local bands that normally exist and we do that very very often mostly in Shillong which is a Gohati where we do the Northeast there there is also that many people who are available to do so as well and they are football passionate fans so that's my take to this I just add to that you know what you said is completely right we have to support independent music and I think at Universal Music we are doing that concept called viral which has become really big over there where independent music and independent artists are invited and then their albums finally you have somebody has to support them to you know to promote their albums because that's when independent music will become big so an initiative has been taken by Universal Music where independent music is getting a lot of traction and I only hope that you know some bit of that also comes in the domain of you know mainline and tomorrow we have a chakde not in a movie but actually being done by an independent music I mean an independent musician for an independent event you know we're running out of time so but I just want to say that it's the most exciting time that we could be ever living in I mean as an independent musician no other time would you need really somebody to represent you etc you can build your own destiny put it up on digital build stuff most of the so-called indie guys in the West are actually doing that whether it's engaging with the audience selling merch etc everything is being managed by them and their team and it's and it's fine you don't need any of the the bigger labels yeah that's absolutely true I mean you can you can paddle your own canoe in many ways now and you know I was actually with Leo Cohen who's the head of YouTube music a few months ago he would say he's telling people just don't you don't need to go to school you don't need to do anything just get in there and do it and that's you can cut out the middleman so to speak but you got to work hard you know I mean it's a competitor that the other side of that is everyone can do it right so well you know what he's right here just go and grab him we got one more question I think maybe we got one more question and that's it I think we're way over time Vivek you're gonna get you ready you're gonna get accosted now I just like to add to this conversation so I'm from Korean and company talent management we managed this amazing band called Sanam we started uploading content on YouTube say in 2013 we are over six million subscriber base on our channel now and we are partnered with eBay we're partnered with uber for the ICC World Cup anthem this year so as an artist rather than connections I think it's important that you keep putting out your content and if it's quality content we living in a digital age and all the avenues are open to you if you like consistently at it and people will get in touch with you brands would want to associate with you rather than you having to reach out to people so right okay thanks if thanks everyone I think we've all got a dash right thanks very much thank you to all the panelists I'd like to request you all to kindly step forward for a group photograph