AGILITAS SPORTS, co-founded by Virat Kohli, recently unveiled the One8 Seam XVIII line of shoes, said to be inspired by cricket’s red ball. The maximum retail price for each pair is ₹10,000; after discount the price is ₹9,230. Why is the discounted price number special? It’s the total number of runs Kohli notched up in his Test career!

It shows how cricket is at the centre of Kohli’s world and the respect he has for the sport. That is also apparent in a video that went viral recently of Kohli, his coach Rajkumar Sharma, and the Seam XVIII shoes. Before the shoes went up for sale, Kohli gifted the first pair to his coach, who has trained the cricketer since he was eight.

Kohli’s dedication towards his sport and coach is also a result of him being a high-performance athlete, which also gives rise to his authenticity as a celebrity brand, as the Fortune India-Interbrand study of India’s Most Valuable Celebrities has found. Kohli, who has a brand value of ₹3,542 crore according to the study, takes the top spot on the list.

His brand portfolio spans across sectors, from luxury to tech. Ashita Aggarwal, professor of marketing at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, says the congeniality and relatability he has with the larger audience is what makes him agile enough to be used by multiple brands. “What works for Virat is his ability to connect with the masses.”

Experts say over the years, Kohli — who plays for two-time champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the IPL — has transformed as a brand and person. “Over a period of time Virat, as a cricketer, evolved from being a person who does exceedingly well on the field into an entity who also does exceedingly well while helping brands sell,” says Harish Bijoor, brand expert and founder of boutique consulting firm Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

“What’s great about Virat is the fact that he also had a personal transformation. When he began, he was considered a bit brattish. Over time, he has matured into not just a supremely fit athlete who has dominated the sport and led India admirably, but someone who has become a role model,” adds Lloyd Mathias, angel investor and business strategist.

Charting his transformation, Bijoor says, “In the beginning Virat was the boy next door. Then he became the naughty boy next door, and finally, the guy with a different brand chemistry [when he married actor Anushka Sharma].”

Mathias agrees that the marriage led to a significant bump in brand value for both. “Both have had great success in their respective careers — Anushka as a movie star, Virat as a player. Together they have become a model celebrity couple.”

Kohli is at a point Bijoor refers to as “spiritual Virat”. “His experiences with whatever he does is to say that he’s climbed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in a very, very formatted manner — from the ‘roti-kapda-makaan’ days, to the social inclusive days, to the spiritual days.”

Mathias also points to Kohli’s actions that show his maturity: one, when he pulled out of a cricket tour to be with Sharma when their first baby was born; and two, when he walked out of his contract with PepsiCo, saying it “did not go with what he stands for”.

Brands and digital

Bijoor says Kohli picks his brands very carefully. “The brands Virat picks do more to him than Virat does to the brands in return, and that’s the beautiful engineering of your brand persona. Virat does it well.”

“He handles brands with care, because he knows that brands give him his reputation.”

Mathias says Kohli’s sporting genius, ability to take mature calls, the fact that he’s one half of a very famous power couple — that has some global resonance with the Indian diaspora — and that he has reinvented himself over almost two decades, “makes him such a superstar”. “He’s also digitally very savvy. He has more than 250 million followers on Instagram. All this makes him such a superstar ambassador.”

In fact, Kohli has one of the highest engagement rates. “Engagement rates are the function of two things. One, he has identified the right causes to be associated with… [and] he’s had a very, very well-curated digital image… a lot of the pictures that he puts out, about him training, or when he’s with Anushka, the image of being more than just a sports celebrity, a family man… all that adds to his persona,” says Mathias.

Aggarwal explains by the time Kohli came into the market as a brand, digital had already become big, and his entire PR machinery was aligned to create visibility in digital media. “The value of a celebrity is also determined by the worth of their Instagram account, its reach etc. All that is a part of the digital strategy… if he has the highest engagement online, it would mean that his acceptance across offline also would be the highest.”

For perpetuity

Launching a pair of sports shoes makes perfect sense for Brand Virat, according to experts. But Harish Thawani, who founded Nimbus Sport, Neo Sports, and The Indus Club, takes it a step further. A sports shoe line, if successful, could be a perpetual source of income for an athlete, beyond their playing days. For instance, the line of Air Jordan shoes by Nike, a tie-up between basketball legend Michael Jordan and the footwear major.

In India, Thawani cites the example of Sunil Gavaskar and his association with cricket gear maker Sanspareils Greenlands — better known as SG — as an example of an athlete who has created sustained royalties from his brand for decades after retiring from playing cricket. Interestingly, Gavaskar and the company share their initials!

“A celebrity sports brand does not create money on its own. It creates money directly proportional to its performance and inversely proportional to its age,” says Thawani. Therefore, it is important to prepare for the “afterlife” — that is, life after their playing days.

Long-term value, he says, can only be created by two things: migrating to endorse a set of brands that are talking to a more age-mature and a higher-income bracket; and two, creating a product line, most likely in partnership with some company, which could be clothing, lifestyle products, sports equipment, or sports clothing.

To protect their brand value, says Thawani, athletes follow these golden rules: One, never endorse brands that negatively impact their personality; two, pick your brand wisely; three, check if the brand is the right fit for their personality; and four, transition to age-mature brands as their playing career is finite.

Kohli, experts feel, has ticked most of the boxes. “He’s transitioned from just being a celebrity brand ambassador to an equity partner,” says Mathias.

Aggarwal feels Kohli is at a stage of his career where he’s leveraging the equity built over years. “He is leveraging his brand and creating assets by investing in his own brands… and that’s where the revenue stream and his visibility will always be.”

“How big a brand you have created initially will determine how long you can survive and leverage the equity you’ve built.”

“One8 is probably the biggest and the most effortful project that I will ever be a part of... It’s something I always dreamt of, but now it’s coming to life,” Kohli said in a recent podcast.

Will the One8 Seam XIII turn out to be Kohli’s Air Jordan move? Only time will tell.