ITV

Tag: Kabbadi

  • OTT and the future of sports broadcasting

    OTT and the future of sports broadcasting

    Mumbai: According to a recent study ‘Can OTT sports platforms shake up the broadcast landscape’ by data and analytics firm Ampere, the growing number of pure-play and generalist OTT services in the sports rights market is putting the traditional rights model under stress.

    In Europe, the likes of DAZN and Amazon Prime Video are beginning to eat into the market share of traditional rights holders, accounting for nearly 10 per cent of sports spends annually. Globally, though, the figure stands at slightly below six per. In cases where OTT services increased the number of bidders for rights, the value of rights has increased. For instance, DAZN’s entrance to German UCL market grew the total value by 62 per cent for 2018-21 cycle. For 2021-24, OTT services have secured all rights to the UCL in Germany, with the new deals increasing the total value by 58 per cent. However this trend did not hold in cases where the overall number of bidders came down, where the impact was negative.

    What this suggests is that pure OTT players have the potential to impact an upward growth in sports rights value together with traditional buyers, especially in cases where the value of rights has stagnated over the years. In the short term, until OTT platforms reach a comparable or higher level of subscription than pay-TV, they will keep adding value to the game.

    The study outlined four broad ways in which OTT services are impacting the sports media landscape – targeting digital-first audiences, making premium sports more affordable, super-serving specific categories of sports fans, and creating a range of D2C opportunities like out-of-market selection, co-exclusivity, and exclusive D2C for rights holders. 
    Case in point: IPL stagnation in rights value is a far-cry for a cricket crazy nation as India. Take for instance, the next (2023-27) cycle of IPL rights that has an aggressive set of bidders in the fray, including the content behemoth Amazon Prime Video. 

    Reliance’s bid, which is likely aimed at more data revenue through Jio, than subscription and ad revenue through the media business under Viacom18, will make the ‘Amazon vs RIL vs Disney vs Sony pitch’ more interesting. The winner will be announced around end-March or early April. 

    While Star’s September 2017’s bid of Rs 16,347.50 crore or ~$2.3 billion (amounting to a 158 per cent increase over the previous deal worth $1.03 billion) for just half the number of years was jaw-dropping, equally noteworthy was Facebook’s individual bid of R. 3,900 crore for the digital rights alone. From less than five per cent in the overall pie of 2008 deal, digital had grown by 25 per cent (4.5 times) in 2017, being seen as a standalone package. 

    According to market buzz, IPL’s digital rights value will see similar growth of around 25-30 per cent for this cycle and understandably so. From 2017 to now, IPL has seen considerable value addition in terms of both OTT viewership as well as digital technology. The overall value is expected to soar up to of $ five billion. A senior BCCI official recently told news agency PTI, “With two new teams about to fetch anything between Rs 7000 to Rs 10,000 crore, IPL broadcast rights could more than double to reach $ five billion (~Rs 36,000 crore).”

    The OTT value ad
    Hotstar got on to a flying start with the first match of IPL 2015 registering 7.2 million views on the app; six times the viewership of the first match of IPL 2014 on starsports.com. In the seven years since it began streaming the IPL live, the league’s viewership has grown from around 40 million in 2015 to 300 million in 2019, increasing every year. While the viewership for the 2020 edition on Hotstar could not cross the previous year’s benchmark, it ranged between 5.7 million and 6.7 million throughout the next (2021) season.

    What’s more significant about these numbers is that they were reached despite the matches being played behind a paywall. Going back to the Ampere study, sports OTT audiences currently make up 25 per cent of total sports audience, and there nearly 800 mn to convert. This is a significantly younger audience with 75 per cent aged between 18 and 44 years. Not only are they willing to pay more, but are also spending more time and are more engaged with both live and non-live programming on the OTT services. In addition to accessibility of content and flexibility of billing options, OTT services are more affordable and unbundled, offering higher control to viewers. They target fans of sports which struggle to find sufficient space on traditional broadcasting platforms. 
    Echoing a similar viewpoint, Grapes national business head – Rajeesh Rajagopalan says, “by virtue of being both precise and personal, OTT services have consolidated the scattered viewership for niche sports, or sports other than cricket in India. The badminton and kabbadi leagues that have come into existence today, is because OTT players started buying these rights.” Pointing out another positive contribution of sports streaming, he states, “OTT being way more innovative with advertising than TV, offers scope even for the smaller brands with medium or modest budgets, provided they have a clearly-defined objective.”

    “The decline in TV viewership of niche sports due to NTO will add to the popularity of sports streaming, which has been on the rise since the onset of the pandemic. The growth is expected to come from tier 2 and 3 cities. It will be spearheaded by DTH platforms providing OTT as a part of their services,” adds Zenith VP Linu John.

    Commenting on the OTT opportunity for brands in India Havas Media Group India head–digital services Rohan Chincholi remarks that from the consumers’ standpoint, India is a market with the lowest cost per GB (~Rs seven per GB) & from the advertisers’ standpoint, there is a massive 350 million+ OTT viewership in India. Of these, paid subscribers are to the tune of ~80 million+ and they subscribe to over two OTT platforms each. 

    “Hotstar is projecting to reach close to 100 per cent of OTT users in India this IPL which speaks volumes about viewers’ interest in streaming sports. However, these audiences are not loyal to one OTT service. Cricket has the potential to garner mass reach in a short span, which is where the platforms win via subscriptions and repeat usage,” observes Chincholi.  
    On the kind of advertising being explored this season he adds, “from an advertising perspective, bundled sponsorships, associations and standalone buys will be a function of clients’ budget. Ad rates will command a premium on all marquee streaming events.  Cost per reach will be higher than any other video sharing/social platform but it’s also a function of audience targeting and data layering – transacting audience cut, connected TV audience.”

    Building on the point WATConsult AVP media planning and strategy Shanu Jain shares that about 70 per cent deals are bundled under different sponsorships including presence on different IPL collaterals, Live prediction, pre & post shows brand integrations, special packages, while around 30 per cent of them are standalone on mid-roll video ads. They command 35-40 per cent premium than normal rates on GEC and other video streaming platforms like YouTube. “Majority of IPL viewership comes from the age bracket of 15-30 years, and Hotstar leads the way in innovative ad formats and inventories. A lot of new ad formats have been introduced to facilitate better recall and user engagement, beginning with pre-rolls every time you start the match to drive higher relevance, and integrating the brand communication at different intervals, to additional options like group chats, contests and regular CTW ads have helped brands look at efficiencies in-terms of audiences who’re watching and clicking on the ads,” notes Jain. 

    OTT services globally have only just started to move the dial in the sports rights market which continues to be dominated by legacy players. They have an increasingly significant part to play alongside TV buyers by helping sports appeal to young hard-to-reach demographic. The Ampere study indicates that while the OTT audiences’ higher willingness to pay may make them look more attractive, their size compared to traditional TV broadcasters must be taken into account to ascertain whether this actually equates to higher revenues or not. 

  • Godrej Consumer Products’ Subha Sreenivasan Iyer on her love for badminton and PBL

    Godrej Consumer Products’ Subha Sreenivasan Iyer on her love for badminton and PBL

    MUMBAI: Badminton, today, is the world’s second most popular sport. And some 150 years after the game was invented in India, the humble shuttlecock sport has once again dazzled one and all in the country of its origin.

    A survey by British research firm SMG Insight revealed that badminton ranks just behind cricket in terms of a sport that Indians choose to play regularly. Additionally, another survey revealed that the interest in Badminton among Indians has more than doubled since 2017 and has gone up by 40 per cent in 2019 over 2018.

    Badminton’s rising popularity in India can also be gauged from the fact that the last edition of Premier Badminton League (PBL) was watched by over 133 million Indians. A mind-boggling number when you consider that the opening ceremony of Rio Olympics 2016 was watched by 342 million people globally. Already one of the world’s biggest badminton leagues, PBL has also helped in establishing the sport as a coveted career choice in India. PV Sindhu got auctioned for Rs 77 lakh and Sai Praneeth bagged 32 lakh for PBL Season 5, starting January 2020.

    As you would expect, big brands have also joined the bandwagon. Brands and sporting events have, in fact, always worked very well together and PBL is no exception. Apart from access to an audience that is 150 million strong, PBL is a great opportunity to build reputations and long-term brand image by investing in a growing sport in India. No wonder then that from telecom operator (Vodafone) to energy drink (Red Bull) to cement manufacturer (Dalmia), big brands have associated with the franchise.

    As the count-down begins to PBL season 5, we bring you stories of media executives who have played, loved and followed the sport; what they love about the game and how can brands effectively leverage PBL’s growing popularity.

    Name: Subha Sreenivasan Iyer 

    Company: Godrej Consumer Products Ltd

    Designation: Head – Media Services

    Favourite Players: Carolina Marin and PV Sindhu

    What do brands see as advantage when they partner with sporting events?

    Exclusivity and synergy in a branding opportunity is what brands see as an advantage. After 2008, when IPL started the popular T-20 league there has been a growth of various non-cricket sporting options which is a marketer’s delight. These events provide lot of options  to connect with audiences in a very relevant manner

    FMCG brands have always invested heavily in sporting properties – why do you think FMCG brands consider sporting events a good investment?

    At Godrej, we were one of the first sponsors of the IPL, when it started and we also used the broadcast platform to create a very innovative engagement with our audiences – we actually gave away a Godrej Apartment as a grand prize to IPL viewers! That was a first.

    With multiple domestic leagues coming up now, there’s so much scope for innovative ways to create engagement with multiple audience segments, which otherwise one couldn’t do much about. 

    Now, besides brand awareness and exposure, one can look at multiple areas of building social connect,  engaging with fans of the sport, tailor specific launch events around sporting events, build custom communication relevant to these audiences and even tap into the fact that these events are now making inroads into more number of towns, which were otherwise not easily accessible. I’m talking about both ground connect as well as media partnerships here. 

    In the last few years, brands have invested in sports other than cricket as well like Badminton, Soccer, Hockey and Kabbadi – do you think sponsorships by these brands will help in the development of various sports and in making India a sporting nation?

    There are two aspects here. First, there’s a lot of private investment into non-cricket sports, which is shaping the way investments are done and bringing in collaboration across advertisers, sporting bodies, government bodies and helping take these events to more number of households. Definitely, that spells good news for the sector because now we’ve created far more opportunities than ever before, for talent to come up. Earlier, most of our non-cricketing sports were either too unorganized or didn’t have the right access to funds, training, platforms, learnings from international leagues etc. Now there’s lot of access and information available.

    As per reports, badminton is already the second-most popular sport in India after Cricket – what role has Premier Badminton League (PBL) played in popularising Badminton in India?

    Actually if you go by numbers and data, after cricket, kabaddi is the next big one. Badminton is definitely popular and is growing for sure. Growth of such leagues, create more opportunities for both talent and advertisers. Badminton as a sport has always been popular across the country, but now it’s gaining scale. 

    What do you think brands find most engaging in leagues like PBL?

    Any sporting event, whether it’s IPL, Formula 1, PBL , kabaddi or football – they have their dedicated fan base who eagerly await for the action dates. There’s so much buzz and excitement which begins right at the auction time and keeps building up as the event progresses. That’s the whole opportunity that brands find attractive in terms of creating engagement opportunities with their respective audience segments. What’s important is how well one can identify synergies between the event and one’s core segment that one’s targeting and execute it well. The fandom for a sport is the biggest asset that a brand can leverage.  

    What role can PBL play in making badminton a coveted career option in a cricket-crazy country like India? 

    There’s the government push for sports in India today, which got a good boost with the Khelo India Youth Games in 2018. Besides, in the past couple of years, beyond cricket, we’ve seen the growth of domestic leagues in badminton, kabaddi, football, and I believe we have leagues coming up in polo, table tennis, boxing and even E-Sports very soon in 2020. All of this means, there’s larger number of homes, witnessing sports in multiple formats and accessing it either through television or OTTs. Besides reach of sports from a marketer’s perspective, this also spells very good for the growth of sports at a grass root level across the country.

    As a marketer when a brand associates with a league like PBL, how does it leverage the association to its fullest? Any thoughts?

    I think, the most important question to answer to ask is what’s the best and most relevant manner in which one can engage with a given opportunity. And at the same time, in terms of ROI, it makes sense. Synergy with the specific audience segment and opportunity cost, both are important. Scope for creating engagement could be on-ground, team associations, multiple ways of actively or passively building connections, depending on the requirement of the brand.  

    Your favourite PBL team?

    I am big fan of both Carolina Marin and PV Sindhu, so whichever team they are playing for, I will root for them.  

    The latest India Watch report finds that sporting events are becoming increasingly popular in smaller cities as well as among women. What opportunities do you see for brands as live coverage of sporting events reaches Tier-II, Tier-III cities?

    Increasing the penetration of this format across larger cities gives an opportunity to create engagement on ground as well as brings in eyeballs from more cities for the sport. The sport benefits for sure. Live coverage gives more engagement options for brands on ground as well as bringing in newer audiences into the fold, which is good. 

    Badminton, unlike other sports like soccer, hockey or kabbadi, is one sport which is equally popular with both men and women – does this make PBL more attractive for certain specific products like Fashion brands or FMCG?

    In terms of absolute viewership numbers of all domestic leagues, it’s split between 40/60 for women : men. Right now, for newer leagues like PBL, the numbers are not yet large enough for us to dissect and pass a verdict like that. More importantly, for a brand, the way they see an opportunity is basis the relevance to their own consumer segment and the connect that they can build with this opportunity, that’s more important. 

    PV Sindhu and Tai Tzu Ying bagged Rs 77 lakh each in the auction that happened. International names are now bagging spots in the seven teams. How do you think PBL has helped build stature for Indian and international clients?

    I think PBL has contributed wonderfully in building badminton. It’s growing at a great pace, we have more players, amazing talent that’s coming on board and all this means there’s so much more growth for players and the game and more investments. Of course, it’s a long journey, but it’s a great start for sure.
     

  • Mr. Netflix, are you ready for India?

    Mr. Netflix, are you ready for India?

    After tasting global success, Mr. Netflix is revving up to thrust into India by 2016. But let’s take a breather here. We are talking about a country which debates about Bharat and India and where a part of the demography still views its favourite content in black and white CRT TV.

     

    While youngsters these days are widely speaking about Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, dear Mr. Netflix wait before you get buoyed by all these series that generates millions for you, as Indians still believe in ‘torrent’ing .

     

    In India, while some of the best movies, made by the greatest filmmakers have been uploaded on YouTube, what has worked is the bathroom comedy by All India Backchod. Why do I talk about this, because if one has to believe the sources, Netflix is meeting a lot of producers across India to rope in quality content for the subscription based video on demand (SVOD) platform. 

     

    I know that the unprecedented number of downloads of Hotstar has tested your temperament and you can’t wait to enter the lucrative Indian market, but this video on demand (VoD) platform from Star India, got most of its downloads, thanks to Cricket, a religion in India. The app has so far been downloaded by more than 10 million Android users.

     

    Hotstar was placed in the top spot in the Google free app category even taking over Facebook and Whatsapp while the ICC Cricket World Cup was on. Now that the World Cup and IPL are over, the platform is not even in the top 10. This substantiates the fact that Hotstar’s unprecedented success was because of the two cricketing events.

     

    So what are you thinking now, Mr Netflix? Hotstar does not have adequate content? Hold on, the platform has 20,000 hours of content spread across seven languages. This includes 120+ full length TV shows and 500+ movies. This apart, the app also live streams popular sports like Cricket, Football, Tennis and Kabbadi. In short, Hotstar caters to a very large and diverse audience.

     

    Hotstar is not the only VOD platform India has. Right from Zee’s DittoTV, Spuul, Zenga, YupTV to the speculated Viacom 18’s soon to be launched VOD platform, competition will be tough. So, Mr Netflix it’s not just another regular expansion of business, you are going to enter a war: A war of over the top (OTT) services.

     

    Not only domestic players, but international ones like HOOQ and Vuclip among others have already entered the Indian market. HOOQ launched in India in May 2015 with a subscription plan of Rs 199.

     

    The subscription based platform has managed to secure 10,000 downloads in the two months since its launch. So Mr. Netflix, you may just have to change your strategy and become an ad based VoD platform, to woo Indian consumers. If industry sources are to be believed, Netflix is looking for a possible tie up with HOOQ for its India launch.

     

    Mr Netflix if you are thinking you will change your strategy and take the ad route let me throw a few numbers. Of the Rs 414 billion Indian advertising budget, only 10.5 per cent is expected to be spent on digital. Eating into this 10.5 per cent will be giants like Google, Yahoo and Bing among others, leaving you with a meager percentage share of the ad pie. If this satisfies you, join the fight and prepare yourself with some melodrama content that can please the advertiser.

     

    By now you must be thinking: what do 1,280 million people in India do and what about the 300 million smartphone exaggeration? Let’s take the number route again. Yes it’s true that India is about to dethrone the US and become the second largest mobile internet market by having more than 300 million wireless internet users and the year-on-year growth rate stands at 31 per cent. The main reason behind it is availability of smartphones at a low price which is enabling the penetration in rural India. But Mr Netflix what content will you provide in rural India? Malgudi Days? And you think rural India will accept it? On a Rs 5,000 smartphone Malgudi Days will look like Guilever Travels and produce sound like a radio. So not convincing!

     

    I know what is lucrative — 210 million wireless internet connections which is estimated to reach 402 million by 2017 and 528 million by 2019. While urban India widely speaks about 3G, majority of them disable their 3G service and stay satisfied with Edge or 2G service. 3G is largely alien to rural India. To add to your vivid imagination, while you are widely reading about smartphone penetration, 66 per cent of the urban internet traffic comes from desktop. 11 per cent of active urban consumers use tablets to access internet of which only 16 per cent consider tablets as their primary device for internet access.

     

    So Mr Netflix, if you still have zest let me present to you the fiercest competition: Television, which you think will diminish with the emergence of digital. Yes, there are close to 300 million internet users whereas only 168 million television households in India. But if one takes a closer look, the168 million households amount to 825 million television viewers.

     

    The growth rate of internet users is also expected to be much higher compared to that of television. From 2014-19 television is expected grow at a CAGR of 3 per cent, when pitched against the huge CAGR 18 per cent for internet users. The television growth can go much higher if more areas are empowered with electricity.

     

    So, only if there is a complete paradigm shift, with five national MSOs and six DTH players committing a bundle of mistakes and a Tsunami of technology comes in to change the entire infrastructure, a concept like SVOD may work, otherwise it may just perish.

     

    Mr Netflix let me introduce a term to you which you might have never come across throughout your journey – ‘buffering’. To watch a video at 144p one has to go through numerous buffering so guess what will happen to someone who wants to watch an Argo or Apocalypse Now.

     

    The only ray of hope for you Mr. Netflix is 4G. Airtel has already launched 4G in some parts of the country and Reliance Jio is expected to launch by 2015 end. 4G is supposed to be a lot faster compared to 3G but the price is yet to be determined. Why did I mention price? As the current scenario goes, to watch 1GB of content one has to pay around Rs 300. So for 10 GB worth of content, one has to pay approximately Rs 3,000 — an amount that can give 500 channels on television for 10 months.

     

    The other ray of hope is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Digital India’ vision.

     

    Mr Netflix don’t worry India believes in Atithi Devo Bhava (Guest Is God) and hence will welcome you with grace and gratitude, like the nation did with Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts.

     

    But at the end of the day as Charles Darwin said ‘Survival of the fittest.’