What is GT20 Canada?

Global T20 Canada is a franchise based T20 Cricket tournament held in Canada. There are Six teams  1. Brampton Wolves  2. Montreal Tigers  3. Toronto Nationals  4. Vancouver Knights  5. Surrey Jaguars  6. Mississauga Panthers which play in a round-robin format with the top 4 making it to playoffs and resulting in one eventual champion. Star players from all over the globe play in the tournament along with some exciting youngsters from the Canadian national team and players from the Associate Nations.

What was the Challenge?

The challenge we had in front of us was that Cricket as a sport is not popular amongst the North American population.

We needed a marketing strategy that interests all our target audience at one time. The North American market consists of roughly 25M+ existing cricket fans, usually immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. We know that they will be interested in watching some of their favourite players in action. What we had to build on was trying to capture the attention and interest of the average North American sports enthusiast.

We came to a conclusion that the average North American sports fan was majorly between the age of 25-49 and primarily male. Their major form of content consumption was through social media and the internet with approximately 30 hours a week spent on the internet, therefore we concluded that the most effective way to market ourselves would be to stay relevant and engage with fans through various activities on social media along with various other forms of promotion.

How did Patronus help?

To attract both our target groups - the South Asian fans and the North American fans, we planned to present this league as a carnival for them to come and enjoy. “A summer festival where the biggest cricket superstars go against each other to win the Title.”

Not only the fans, but the cricketers too loved the carnival vibe around the whole tournament. Starting from the entry to the stadium, the food and ice cream trucks, merchandise stalls, carnival game stalls, meet & greet with the legends, and of-course cricket. The existing North American sports inspired our style of communication. Right from our logo to the championship rings, we re-packaged cricket in the North American way and presented it to the fans.

Result

Our marketing strategies helped GT20 Canada to build a fanbase, with over 120K+ live audiences turning up at the stadium across both seasons.

GT20 Canada- Social Links