TravTalk India Online Magazine
Gainwell Sports, which promotes a number of sports events worldwide, and has become the official partner to offer hospitality packages for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, to be held in Australia in October 2022, says agents can buy tickets for the game from them, make their own packages, sell them to customers and earn commission.
Nisha Verma
Manoj Saraf, MD, Gainwell Travel and Gainwell Sports, shared that Gainwell Sports became a new vertical for the company about seven years ago. “Since then, we have been promoting all sporting events across the world. Apart from cricket, we are also selling FIFA World Cup in Doha, Grand Slam tournaments, the football fixtures in Europe, and every possible sports, including Formula 1. Now, this vertical has become very important. In 2019, we were the official agent for Cricket World Cup in England and in 2020 we were also the official agent for the T20 World Cup Australia, which got cancelled because of the pandemic,” he informed.
“Now the opportunity is back this year, with the World Cup happening in October and we are now the official hospitality agents for this product. This means that we will provide the premium tickets for all the matches of the World Cup — including the five India matches, starting with India versus Pakistan and then the preliminary matches, which India is playing at Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth, followed by semifinals and finals. The hospitality tickets will be given by us at face value, which ensures that the end customer is getting the ticket at the price he can see on the website. There is no markup or additional cost on that. That is because we will get a small commission on them. This would prevent all kinds of hoarding of tickets,” he added.
Distribution
Saraf revealed that even the agents can buy the tickets from them and make their own packages and sell them. “Although there is a procedure for making the payment, and Gainwell would guarantee a small commission to the travel agents. This works in a very transparent way as these are hospitality tickets, where food and beverage would be complimentary for all the spectators in the stadium,” he said.
The distribution of these match products are done only through a limited channel, shared Saraf. “We have a huge network of travel agents across India, and we expect a lot of sales to happen through the travel trade across India. Leading agents like Kuoni, SOTC and Make My Trip are probably going to buy tickets through us or one of our channels. So, it is a huge scope for selling B2B here,” he added.
Plans
Apart from the Cricket World Cup in Australia, Saraf is promoting a number of other sports events. “Looking at my general sports calendar, the first event that we are promoting is the Bahrain Formula One from 18th – 20th March. We will see a lot of people travelling for that and we have a lucrative product starting at about `65,000, all inclusive for people to go to Bahrain, watch the Formula 1 and come back,” he informed.
“After that there is the T20 World Cup in Australia and immediately after that is the FIFA Football World Cup in Doha. In between these two mega events, we also have many football tournaments, the English Premier League and the La Liga Football tournaments across Europe. Hence, a lot of people who are travelling to Europe or sports fans are keen to watch games there,” he added.
Saraf claimed that in the last few years young travellers going abroad are not just going for a holiday but for an experience. “If he is a sports fan, he would make sure to watch a football game, Wimbledon, Cricket, or anything else he likes. Thus, it has become a big attraction and add on to any holiday package,” he said.
Gainwell Travels
Saying that they are slowly opening up, Saraf added, “We did fairly well in the October-December quarter. In fact, we were almost catching up on our regular business when Omicron hit. Now we see a lot of people coming back to travel, or people who cancelled bookings in January want to travel in February-March.”
