Two endorsement playbooks: How brands support India’s men and women cricketers

Cricket has long been India’s most reliable commercial engine. For decades, however, that engine ran on a single track: one that led squarely to the men’s dressing room. Today, the tracks are multiplying. Women’s cricket is drawing record viewership, producing its own icons, and attracting brand conversations that would have seemed unlikely five years ago. Yet beneath the surface of the endorsement ecosystem, the picture that emerges is more layered than a simple story of parity.

The categories backing male and female cricketers have long been shaped by very different commercial logics: one built on decades of infrastructure, sponsorship muscle, and deep media rights money, and the other now finding its footing, buoyed by a World Cup win and a generation of fans that no longer needs to be told to care about women's sport.

The category map

Harish Bijoor, Brand Guru and Founder of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc., points out that the category gap is closing, even if the money gap persists. "I do believe women cricketers have caught up with men cricketers when it comes to endorsing categories. Women today not only endorse casual categories but also enter more serious ones. Casual meaning at leisure, shoes, accoutrements, cosmetics, whereas more serious categories mean possibly even consumer electronics," he says.

For men's cricketers (particularly the top tier of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and the cadre just below them), the endorsement portfolio reads like a cross-section of India's aspirational economy. Fintech platforms, consumer electronics, premium apparel, fantasy sports, edtech, automotive, and real estate have all been on the roster at various points. The common thread is scale: brands spending top-dollar to align with mass-reach athletes whose Instagram followings often rival the population of a mid-sized country. At its apex, this is a category-agnostic game. The cricketer is a platform, and nearly every sector wants space on it.

Read On: Celebrities and Banks: Do star endorsements really build trust?

Women cricketers, by contrast, have historically been concentrated in a narrower band of categories: personal care, casual apparel, sportswear, and lifestyle brands. These are not trivial categories; in fact, they are often strategic fits, given that women cricketers often score highly on authenticity and relatability with younger, urban audiences. But the portfolio's diversity and the ticket size attached to it have traditionally lagged behind those on the men's side.

The shift in categories, then, is real. The shift in fees is where the story gets complicated.

Eyeballs are the real currency

The fundamental driver of endorsement money in cricket (men's or women's) has always been viewership. And in 2025, the viewership numbers around women's cricket have become impossible for brands to ignore. India's ICC Women's ODI World Cup 2025 win was a watershed moment not just for sport but for the commercial ecosystem that orbits it. JioHotstar reported over 185 million viewers for the final alone: a figure that dwarfs the combined viewership of the previous three editions of the tournament.

Suraj Nedungadi, Associate Vice President – Strategy at YAAP, frames it as more than a viewership spike. "This isn't a moment, it's a movement. The surge in viewership for women's cricket isn't just noise; it's a signal. The 2025 Women's ODI World Cup attracted more viewers than the previous three editions combined. That's not a spike in interest, that's a tectonic shift in how India consumes sport," he says.

Nedungadi also points to a broader cultural shift that is dissolving the gender lines around sports consumption in India. "Audiences today are watching sports for great stories, skills and spectacle and not for gender labels. The lines between men's and women's sports are blurring. With stars like Shafali Verma rising to national fame, it's only a matter of time before we see these star athletes evolve into strong personal brands, cultural forces and business empires — not unlike the stars of the men's teams," he adds.

The framing here matters. For brands and their agency partners, the proposition around women cricketers is no longer charity or tokenism; it is a genuine commercial opportunity to improve ROI metrics. The ICC Women's T20 World Cup 2024 had already drawn record broadcast numbers before this year's ODI coup, suggesting that the viewership trend is not a one-off.

Read On: World Cup win: Top players poised for 10–20% rise in endorsement values?

The fee chasm

According to industry estimates, the top women cricketers (including Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma, and Shafali Verma) have seen their endorsement fees rise sharply. Bijoor pegs the growth at significant numbers over a compressed timeline. "When you look at it from a three-year perspective, women cricketers' endorsement fees have actually doubled if not tripled in some cases," he notes. But he is quick to add the crucial qualifier: "It happens with a small set of cricketers right at the top — the top seven cricketers."

Contrast that with the men's side. Bijoor puts the spread at a staggering 21 cricketers who command meaningful endorsement money, not just the starting eleven, but a deep bench of players who attract brands regardless of whether they are in the current playing XI. That depth of commercial opportunity does not yet exist for women's cricket, where the endorsement economy is concentrated in a small cluster of recognizable faces. "There lies the difference, there lies the disparity, and there lies the disaster," Bijoor says.

It is a pointed observation. The men's endorsement economy functions almost like a fund with diversified holdings: many names, many categories, consistent annual inflows from brands with deep pockets. The women's endorsement economy, for all its recent momentum, is still behaving like a concentrated bet. A few stocks are performing exceptionally well, but the portfolio is lacking breadth.

The Olympic analogy, and why it worries some

Not everyone in the industry is ready to call it a structural shift, however. A senior industry leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, offers a more cautious read. For them, the trajectory of women's cricket endorsements risks following the pattern of Olympic sports in India: a burst of brand interest after a landmark win, followed by a gradual decline as the headlines move on.

"India's women's win at the ICC World Cup 2025 has really been a big one, a very well-achieved success. From a purely brand-endorsement perspective, I do believe women's cricket will remain on the second rung of cricket sponsorship spend. Men's cricket will garner the maximum for sure, and women's cricket will get what remains," this leader says.

The Olympic analogy is instructive. India's gold rushes in games like wrestling, badminton, and shooting have historically produced a surge of brand interest that rarely sustains beyond the 18-month mark. The fear is that women's cricket, despite its structural advantages over Olympic disciplines (a domestic league in the WPL, year-round media coverage, and embedded IPL association), may yet follow a similar arc. "Once in four years we have wins, and what really happens is the excitement and the aura around the win is big, but over the months this aura diminishes," the leader notes.

"Yes, brand endorsement monies will go to women's cricket, but not as much as it should. The ultimate arbiter of it is the kind of prizes that a woman cricketer will command vis-à-vis a man cricketer, and I think till that gap gets bridged, inequity shall reign supreme," they add.

Read On: Cricket Ad: Where does rivalry end and ridicule begin?

The smart money's next move

The Women's Premier League, launched in 2023, has been the most consequential structural intervention in the commercial story of women's cricket. With franchise owners including Reliance Industries, Adani Sportsline, and Royal Challengers Sports, the WPL has injected significant money and attention into the ecosystem, and, with it, brand conversations that did not previously exist. Franchise cricket, as the IPL demonstrated over 17 seasons, is the fastest machine ever built for converting sporting talent into bankable commercial assets.

Nedungadi sees this as the beginning of something much larger than cricket. "Cricket's ubiquity makes it the starting point but certainly not the end point of this transformation. What we're witnessing is the first wave of a broader movement across football, hockey, and Olympic disciplines, in which new female icons are emerging. The momentum is real, and the smart brands will see it for what it is: the birth of a new commercial frontier," he says.

For brands and agencies currently drawing up their endorsement playbooks, the question is no longer whether to invest in women cricketers, but how quickly, how broadly and at what price. The category mix may be converging, yet fee structures and the depth of commercial opportunity still tell two distinct stories: one built over decades of compound growth, the other still in its early chapter.