I have been taking a more than passing interest in the IPL. There's something in me that wants it to do well, I wonder why. I've seen the greed drive soccer down a murky road of agents and obscene player prices, although the English Premier League has showcased quality football for most part. But I'll keep discussion related to IPL for a later time. I did have a look at the IPL franchisees' websites. At the time of writing, Mumbai Indians (quite possibly the worst team name, which was a rather unequivocal conclusion even from the press; this is not saying that the other franchises had significantly better names), Chennai Super Kings and Punjab Kings didn't have websites.
These are the websites of the other teams though:
Rajasthan Royals They have a decent website which is functional at the moment with scope for future expansion into merchandising and tapping the mobile market. A decent website that looks upon Shane Warne as their mascot.
Bangalore Royal Challengers I find Vijay Mallya's face at the splash screen a little creepy. Why can't he stay at the background for once? Even the Knightriders don't have SRK in their splash screen. Again, a decent enough site that looks a little colourful, but I don't like the Red and Yellow combination.
Kolkata Knight Riders SRK seems to have a good idea of the market pulse. If their website is any judge, he's got things right and seems very serious about this venture. He will dream big no doubt. (Full disclosure: I'm not a big fan of SRK's acting) His website has a rather decent theme song too. I however, highly doubt if his heavy flash oriented web site would allow low bandwidth sites to get full value, but props to his tech staff. Great Bong had his take on Kolkata Knight Riders but it looked like he was trying hard to sound funny, which is rather quite unlike GB.
Delhi Daredevils They just have a splash screen with some jarring 5 second electric guitar riff, on loop.
Deccan Chargers An average website, but I don't get why these IPL teams find the need to seek inspiration from American teams (in this case, the San Diego Chargers). The PHL had better team names. Deccan Chargers also call themselves 'The Unstoppables'. We'll see how true that is. Their press releases also include a headline 'DC unleashes war cry'. Even being owned by an English Daily cannot stop such gems from being published on websites.
It's a shame that Mumbai doesn't even have a website. So much for being owned by RIL.
And finally, a word on the official IPL website: it's a disgrace. So much money and they couldn't come up with staff who could update the site beyond their latest news which says, IPL auction to be held on 20th of February. Well, to think of it, they have done slightly better than the BCCI, who, to my knowledge don't even have a website.
