When the third season of Indian Premiere League (IPL), one of the world’s fastest

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growing sporting brands in the shortest time, opens on March 12 in Mumbai, its chairman and commissioner Lalit Kumar Modi is offering the best viewing experience in stadiums, theatres, at public venues and on YouTube supported by the best technology that has never before been tried in Indian sports broadcasting.

According to Modi, for the first time in India there will be a blimp (airship) at most of the IPL matches. Modi, who wrote about it on Twitter, has not given much details of what he proposes to do by bringing blimps to IPL match venues.

Having seen Modi’s penchant for making IPL among the most successful and profitable sporting brands in the world, blimps could be used to generate advertising revenues by inviting brands to sponsor them and letting television, theatre and online viewers to experience what sports commentators call the “blimp shots”.

According to a recent report published in SportzP­ower, an online and offline publication that provides information on broadcast and marketing rights for all major sports properties in India, IPL has already invited bids for the sponsorship of blimps. “The winning bidder will gain sponsorship rights over the blimp for 24 games of the overall 60, at the discretion of the IPL,” the report said. The report said the blimps will be fixed at a suitable location at the stadiums during the Twenty20 matches.

Sports broadcasters in the US have been using blimps with cameras attached to them during the US Open tennis championship, the PGA Championship and National Football League (NFL) games to shoot aerial pictures .

It was in January 1, 1959, that for the first time a camera fixed on a blimp captured images of a college football game between Georgia and Missouri in the Orange Bowl.

With IPL selling global theatrical rights, viewers in theatres (close to 800 theatres will show the matches live) will also be seeing the “blimp shots”. Online viewers will also see the images coming from the blimps as IPL has already partnered with Google to broadcast all matches live (with a 5-minute delay) on YouTube.

IPL will add two new franchises from the fourth season in 2011. There are 12 cities eligible to invite bids. The global tendering process for the two franchisees will begin on February 21 and the winning bids will be opened in Mumbai on March 7 so as to allow the two new team owners and their management teams access the third season and better prepare them for the IPL 2011. A base price of $225 million per franchise has been set for the two new franchises.