If there is one sports person in India who has acquired the status of a Bollywood star, it undoubtedly is Sania Mirza. Still below sixties in world ranking, she is yet to reach the pinnacle of her chosen profession.
Yet she is already a talking point worldwide. Even the Chinese media has included Sania Mirza among the world’s all-time ‘Top 10 Tennis Beauties’ along with Russian star Maria Sharapova and former player Gabriela Sabatini.
The Chinese media portrayed her wearing a traditional Indian dress as well as donning a skimpy tennis attire, a picture apparently shot during a Grand Slam Championship.
May be because of her good looks, her often `controversial attire’ or her career prospects, she is already a hot commodity on internet. Blogsites dedicated to Sania have appeared and get monumental page views. You have everything from sania wallpapers, posters and other hot downloads.
The Sania Effect on Commodities?
When we analyse this we can get parallel examples from the real world of commodities—all the expensive ones such as oil and gold.
Tennis is an expensive profession, hard for anyone to get into and equally difficult for anyone to get the top. So is cricket. But in cricket there are already so many players who have made it to the top and more hopefuls on the queue.
One may wonder why leading FMCG companies want to feature Sania even when they were never interested in Vijay Amritraj, Prakash Padukone, our own Payyoli Express- P T Usha, Shiny Wilson, or Karnam Malleswari. Or our tennis veterans of yesteryears, Ramanathan Krishnan, Ramesh Krishnan or for that matter anyone else.
The closest any athlete came to becoming a star was Ashwini Nanchappa but her film forays were not successful at all, despite her good looks and talent.
In the case of Sania, her good looks and occasional upset wins were sufficient to catapult her to a hot brand in India, but not necessarily in the global arena where you have Maria Sharpova, Anna Kournikova or Martina Hingis, still others. Therefore, she is just a hot commodity in the global market.
In addition to that her dress and attire and the controversies surrounding it also helped her to be in the limelight and nobody focused too much on her winnings and losings.
One analyst Mark Dampier wrote in The Independent, UK that right now it is wise to go for gold because nothing else is glittering in an analysis of commodity markets.
The same could apply for Sania. For companies that want her to endorse their products or the excited bloggers, there isn’t anyone as glittering as Sania around. Again, ad agencies go for endorsements because it is less risky than thinking up off-beat `creatives’ which may or may not ring cash registers for their clients.
Her stature would continue until more and more young girls take to tennis and become successful in international circuits. Again with a high barrier—the expenses involved in taking to tennis, she is not likely to be displaced from her throne soon.
It was Amritraj’s Brittannia Foundation that helped budding youngsters like Leander Paes and several others to enter this sport.
For Sania, nursing an injury after a major tournament, all these sponsorships and adulation could help her perform better. You need money to take part in tournaments, hiring coaches and keeping fit.
For the time being, the nation and all the sponsors have invested in a hope called Sania just as investors bet on stocks hoping their value appreciates over time.
Look at Coke, which uses Sania’s endorsement. It continues to be a global leader in beverages because of its closely guarded secret of which cinnamon and nutmeg are ingredients.
Manny economists talk of `scarcity value’ of a commodity as the one determinant of the price of a commodity. If indeed, OPEC can create scarcity value by not producing more oil, international prices of oil shoots up. You cannot dig everywhere and get oil.
Whether it is coal, gold, oil, coal or for that matter any hot commodity it is confluence of high entry costs into industry, `scarcity value’ and non-availability of some other alternative that drives up prices. Call this the `Sania’ effect of commodities market.
Source: http://www.commodityonline.com/
