Sachin Tendulkar is a world famous Indian batsman, who holds the record of scoring highest number of runs in one day and test match format of cricket sport. Sachin, recently accomplished a feat of crossing the mark of 17,000 runs in one day international cricket. He is believed to the world's highest paid cricketer of all time. He has changed the brand endorsed on his bat from MRF to Adidas.

What's in a bat?
I have seen Sachin play with MRF bat since my childhood from 1993. MRF paid a huge amount money annually to Sachin for using their brand sticker on his bat.

What motivated Sachin to change his bat?
It is believed by the brand industry experts that his contract with MRF came to an end and MRF chose not to renew it. Adidas was more than happy to find a free Sachin to sign a contract with him.

What did MRF get?
MRF benefited greatly out of the ten year deal with Sachin to use their brand name sticker on his bat. With that bat, Sachin achieved a ton of records. Every cricket lover knows consciously/sub-consciously knows that Sachin uses an MRF bat.

When young children buy a wooden bat, they insist that it has MRF sticker on it to make sure that bat scores runs like that of Sachin's. An internet surfer wrote "MRF logo looked better on sachin's bat. Maybe I am too used to seeing it."

MRF brand name went deep down into the people of India, it was on the tongue of every Indian who followed cricket or admired Sachin Tendulkar as a player. They had got what was most important for them, a brand name in India and parts of the world which followed cricket.

Why did MRF move on?
After ten years of being on Sachin's bat, people may have become ad blind. They might have stopped noticing it as much as it used to be noticed earlier. That's when MRF decided to move on.

What's in for adidas?
The strongest advantage that adidas has over MRF is that MRF is not a sport related company, it's a tyre company. So surely MRF benefited word of mouth branding by sponsoring Sachin's bat, but its definitely less when compared with what adidas can get out of this deal. Adidas is a sports company. Adidas logo on Sachin's bat would boost the sales of Adidas apparel and sports gear in the sub continent.

This deal is the best that Adidas can get in India. Every rupee spent in this deal will bring back at least double the amount money back to adidas in form of profit.

The Numbers:
There is no official record of how much MRF used to pay Sachin or how much Adidas pays Sachin for the bat. In my opinion MRF would have paid annual fees no less than 5 crores of Indian Rupees per year in the past and Adidas must have been paying no less than 10 crores of Indian rupees.

Comment below about how much you think Adidas pays Sachin at the moment.