Love thy club

Last weekend, a group of about 40 people gathered together in a room at the ITC Gardenia in Bangalore. They came from across the country, and though most of them were meeting each other in person for the first time, they were familiar with one another.

They knew each other from fan forums on the Royal Challengers Bangalore website. And they were in the city to attend the first annual Royal Challengers Fan Summit, a one-day "unconference" designed to give them a chance to present their ideas to the team on six topics ranging from the environment to player motivation.

While most sports leagues around the world have seasons that last many months, giving teams time and space to connect with their fans through events on the field, the IPL lasts a mere six weeks. So franchises are forced to find ways to keep their fans engaged when no cricket is being played. The most active team in this regard is Bangalore, which boasts almost 90,000 registered users on its website. Of course, getting people to sign up is the easy part. The trick is to get them to come back, which RCB has done remarkably well in spite of the constraints.

Sidhartha Mallya, the son of United Breweries Group chairman Vijay Mallya, has been a director of Royal Challengers Sports Private Ltd, which owns the Challengers, for a year now. He is aware of the difficulties of keeping a fan interested without cricket. "One of the big challenges that any IPL team faces is that unlike, say, the EPL, which has a nine-month season and a three-month off season, we are tasked with only having a six-week window and then we have another 46 weeks to keep fans interested.

"So having an event like this brings fans closer to the team and gives them an opportunity to give their ideas and views in to RCB. And from our perspective as well, I feel like we can give back to them by giving them the opportunity to champion initiatives and giving them ownership to take them forward."

Mallya intends to host summits like this one often to generate new ideas and keep things "fresh". "We are nothing without the fans," he says. "If we aren't catering to their needs, then we are failing at what we are doing."

Over the last three years, Bangalore has catered to its supporters in a number of ways, starting with the Fanatic Fan challenge, where four people are picked each year to travel with the team during the IPL as the official blogger, photographer, videographer and podcaster.

Twenty-four-year-old Aneesh Surender won the challenge to be chief blogger for 2010. He spent six weeks with the team, travelling on the same flights and staying in the same hotels. He blogged twice a day, feeding RCB fans their daily dose of insider information they couldn't get anywhere else. "It was an experience that is not matched anywhere else in the world," he said. "I haven't heard of fans travelling with sports teams and seeing how things are on the inside."

Surender, who lives in Hyderabad, was drawn to RCB initially because of Anil Kumble and Rahul Dravid, his favourite players. But RCB gave him a second reason to be a fan by actively cultivating its fan base. "What fans really want is to get as close as possible to the team, to meet their idols once in a while," he says.

To select the presenters for the unconference, the franchise asked fans to submit proposals on each topic on their website. Six fans, all of whom received certificates bestowing on them the title of "idea champions", were selected from over 600 entrants. They ranged from 33-year-old Cisco employee Praveen GS to 17-year-old schoolkid Vignesh Sridhar, whose parents called the team management to make sure he wouldn't be served alcohol before allowing him to travel from Chennai. Another 30-odd of the team's most fevered fans were chosen to attend the event.

Praveen, who calls Bangalore home, was the first of the "idea champions" to take the stage. He wants RCB to "go green" by planting saplings. The idea is tossed around the room, with almost everyone chiming in. There are suggestions to grow vegetables, to adopt trees, and to cycle to games. At the end of the session, Praveen said he was encouraged not only to keep supporting Bangalore but also to encourage others to join him.

Although he lives in Chennai, Sridhar was born in Bangalore, and that combined with his love for Robin Uthappa is why he gave his "heart and soul" to RCB. This young fan even put together a YouTube video of Uthappa's highlights to help motivate the batsman when he struggled to score runs last year.

But over time Sridhar's relationship with the team changed. He has become the kind of fan every franchise covets - one whose loyalty lies with the organisation and not with a player who might switch teams. While Uthappa is still his favourite player - he likes him "more than Sachin Tendulkar" - it is the people around the team who have become the reason he cheers for it. "The community managers [of the website] have done a wonderful job," he says. "They have been so nice and courteous. The people have drawn me to RCB and I don't care if Robin leaves. I am never going to leave."

Purnima Malhotra was the only female presenter at the unconference. Malhotra, 20, is studying journalism in Delhi and was there to talk about the power of social media and mobile devices. A Punjabi by birth, she could have chosen to follow the Kings XI Punjab or the Delhi Daredevils, but she chose to follow Bangalore because of her passion for Rahul Dravid. Like with the others, this passion was eventually transferred to the team.

Malhotra tells a story about meeting the Challengers' coach Ray Jennings at the Fanatic Fans contest in February this year. The two of them were discussing cricket strategy when Jennings, unsolicited, gave her his email address. He told her to write to him whenever she had an idea about the team and he would be sure to write back.

It is this openness, this willingness to listen and respond to their fans, that has paid off in the size and depth of the Challenger fan base. "You are getting heard and getting replies," she says. "It helps you bond better with the team and the club." These efforts have made fans feel like members of a one big, happy family. Malhotra sent in her presentation for the fan summit because it was a chance to "give something back to the club that has given me so much".

So while there is much still to be decided ahead of next year's IPL, Bangalore are secure in the knowledge that most of their fans aren't going anywhere. "It is not about the money you can make," Surender says. "It is about a feeling you get. How you connect with the club."