Shah Rukh Khan along with Juhi Chawla has bagged the Kolkata team, while Preity Zinta along with his boy friend Nes Wadia has bagged the Mohali cricket team under the to be launched Indian Players League. This is for the first time that the Hindi film stars are leveraging their reputation and their goodwill to be identified with a professional sport like cricket.
This initiative would provide a semblance of seriousness for the Hindi film industry in the eyes of the policy makers to be. The confidence to be able to successfully bid for sports like cricket would have a multiplier and synergetic effect in the associated field as well. Apart from the usual advertisement campaigns that would get associated with the teams of Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta, the presence of Shah Rukh Khan for instance to represent his team in Kolkata could provide a platform for the Bengali film industry to use the platform of IPL to market the Bengali films through the occasion. Or for that matter a Preity Zinta in Mohali could provide a platform of national eminence to Punjabi, Haryanwi and Himachali films.
This is one aspect that could be capitalized upon through the platform of IPL as cricket and films always have a history of feeding on to each other. Besides, the passionate fan following that the regional films generate among the fans, would also ensure captive audience through the matches and the telecast being planned on all India level a new era of migration of stars from one region to another can also begin.
The possibilities are immense, but one thing is for sure if the planners pool their head and the resources together then the rut that the regional films are into at present could become a thing of the past. The goodwill then that stars like Shah Rukh and Preity Zinta would generate would be immense for the cause of the regional films apart from the benefits that it would generate for cricket as sports.