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Tag: Star Sports

  • Sharlton Menezes joins Tata Sky as head of digital content

    Sharlton Menezes joins Tata Sky as head of digital content

    MUMBAI: Sharlton Menezes has joined DTH operator Tata Sky as head of content for digital. Based in Mumbai, Menezes, who took up the role last month, is reporting to Tata Sky’s chief content officer Arun Unni.

    Menezes has around a decade of experience in the content world. He started his content journey with Zee Entertainment Enterprise Ltd (ZEEL), where he was head of content and marketing English entertainment (Zee Cafe and Zee Studio) for the majority of his tenure. In August 2015, he was elevated to business head-digital video at the company.

    He subsequently joined LeEco, a Chinese multinational conglomerate corporation. It entered into the Indian market with mobile phones. Menezes worked with LeEco for over a year till May 2017.

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  • 46.5 million Fans tuned into VIVO IPL 2018 auction on the Star Sports Network

    46.5 million Fans tuned into VIVO IPL 2018 auction on the Star Sports Network

    The VIVO IPL 2018 auction event received an overwhelming response on television and digital in India, and globally on social. A massive 46.5 million-fans, approximately 6x more than last year, tuned in to watch the 2-day auction event on the Star Sports Network as per BARC data (Source: BARC 2+ U+R). Digital viewership too surged by 5x on Hotstar as compared to 2017. The auction was telecast on a bouquet of 6 channels including Star Sports 1 (SD+HD), Star Sports1 Hindi (SD+HD), Star Sports First & Star Sports 1 Tamil.

    Star India – MD, Sanjay Gupta said, “The huge surge in viewership numbers for the 2018 auction underlines the importance IPL holds for audiences. There’s tremendous enthusiasm and anticipation about the tournament and we are committed to making VIVO IPL 2018 a exciting experience for the fans, who will experience the combined power of Star Sports and Hotstar.”

    BCCI, CEO, Rahul Johri – “Over the years the Indian Premier League has captured the hearts of viewers not just in India but across the world. Going by the viewership so far, both, the anticipation and the quality of delivery have risen. With Star India at the forefront, we hope and our confident the VIVO IPL 2018 will serve the interests of cricket in India and the expectations of cricket lovers like never before. The 6-month IPL extravaganza this year will surely set new benchmarks and change the face of sports broadcasting in India.”

    On social media, as per a report by ‘The Distillery’, Star India’s social intelligence cell, the auction event was a global phenomenon with 843K mentions worldwide – a five-fold increase over the numbers in 2017. Hashtags #IPLAuction, #IPL2018 trended on Twitter, recording a 91% positive sentiment score amongst the audiences. The auction received maximum chatter from Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

  • VIVO IPL 2018 player auction clocks 5X viewership

    VIVO IPL 2018 player auction clocks 5X viewership

    As VIVO IPL 2018 fever gathers momentum, the player auction for the season witnessed record viewership numbers on Hotstar, India’s largest premium streaming platform.  The highly anticipated event – a potent mix of famous team owners, and bids for the world’s best loved cricketers – registered record numbers on the platform with a 5X increase in viewership compared to the previous season.

    While IPL has grown each year since its inception, 2018 promises to be an inflection point in its history as Hotstar and Star Sports reimagine it into a 6-month extravaganza, with technology at the heart of the experience.

    With the intent to be the singular destination for all things IPL, Hotstar also today announced plans to roll out the fastest cricket scorecard in the country – with load time under 0.5 seconds. The new scorecard unit will be available to all Hotstar users when they open the app.

    The seemingly simple feature packs in complex coding under the hood to provide the live score, with zero lag, to over 250 million varied devices across the country. With the fastest load time compared to any other cricket score feed, the feature is designed to minimize friction for the user, completely eliminating the need to search for the score anywhere else. The feature will be rolled out with the first Vivo IPL match on 6 April 2018.

  • Star Sports EVP and marketing head Shubhranshu singh quits

    Star Sports EVP and marketing head Shubhranshu singh quits

    MUMBAI: Star Sports executive vice president and head of marketing Shubhranshu Singh has quit Star India after a four-year stint.

    Incidentally, Star Sports has got a new CEO in Gautam Thakar, who joined the company from 15 January. Singh’s last day at the organisation was mid-January.

    Singh was instrumental in delivering various successful marketing campaigns for the channel, including the entire Pro Kabaddi marketing strategy. According to a source, he will be embarking on a new assignment outside the broadcast industry.

    Singh had joined the company in December 2013 after a two-and-a-half-year stint at Visa as marketing director for India and South Asia. An experienced marketing professional with more than 15 years of experience, Singh holds an MBA degree in international business from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. He has also worked on channel development and customer marketing.

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  • Star Sports encourages kids to take up sports with studies

    Star Sports encourages kids to take up sports with studies

    MUMBAI: Across generations in India, there is an age-old Indian adage that goes, ‘Padhoge Likhoge Banoge Nawab, Kheloge Kudoge Banoge Kharab’. This has become a motto to encourage youngsters to single-mindedly study hard in order to be successful.

    Challenging this societal norm, Star Sports’ new film emphatically states, ‘Kheloge kudoge toh banoge lajawab’: a new motto for India’s youth to follow. The film has been launched to promote the pioneering initiative of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India which will be broadcast on the Star Sports network and Hotstar, beginning 31 January 2018.

    Through a series of dramatic sequences of various sports and a moving script, the film is a call for youngsters to pursue sports alongside education. The film features Indian sports heroes such as badminton player P Gopichand, tennis star Leander Paes, Indian football captain Sunil Chhetri, Olympic badminton silver medalist PV Sindhu, Olympic wrestling bronze medalist Sakshi Malik, renowned Paralympic athlete Deepa Malik, hockey player Sardara Singh, Kabaddi player Rahul Chaudhari, and gymnast Dipa Karmakar.

  • Gautam Thakar new Star Sports CEO

    Gautam Thakar new Star Sports CEO

    MUMBAI: At long last the post left vacant by Nitin Kukreja has been filled. Gautam Thakar has been appointed as the CEO of Star Sports. Thakar replaces Kukreja, who quit the company in March.

    Currently working with Washington DC-based investment firm Revolution LLC, Thakar will take up the new role on 15th January.

    Thakar started his career as a brand manager with P&G in India, then led baazee.com as a founding management team member to become the No 1 e-commerce company in India. He then spent 10 years in eBay in a variety of leadership roles before leading the turnaround at LivingSocial.

    Thakar has an MBA from IIM, Lucknow.

    The Star Sports network is home to some of the best sporting properties in India. The upcoming year is especially critical for the network with Star India bagging the rights for the coveted Indian Premier League (IPL).

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  • Star India to introduce VR for IPL 2018

    Star India to introduce VR for IPL 2018

    NEW DELHI: With Star India, you can always expect the unexpected or something high-octane. In line with this philosophy, the broadcaster, along with its over-the-top (OTT) service Hotstar, is exploring the use of virtual reality, or VR, to heighten viewer experience during the 2018 season of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

    Speaking at a session themed ‘10 Media Transformations for 2018 & Beyond’ at the CII Big Picture Summit 2017 here yesterday, Hotstar’s consumer and revenue head Prabh Singh gave a sneak peek into the innovations being planned around the IPL, which included the VR experience for viewers.

    “Yes,” Singh said when asked by session moderator and NDTV consulting editor Vikram Chandra whether he had heard correctly that Star/Hotstar was mulling introducing VR headsets for viewers in IPL matches in 2018.

    Apart from VR, Singh divulged that Hotstar had been experimenting with other innovations such as score overlays to give additional benefits to subscribers watching cricket matches on the streaming service so they could not only watch the video but also enjoy extra information to add to the overall viewing experience.

    On the sidelines of the event, when asked by Indiantelevision.com how the VR experiment would play out, Singh mysteriously said: “wait and watch”. Pressed further on the issue whether VR headsets would be given to random spectators in stadiums or select subscribers of Hotstar, he added that the logistics were still being worked out, which included a possible tie-up with a VR (headset) company, too.

    Will the VR experience be extended to all the IPL matches? Singh refused to comment on the question.

    Star India, earlier in the year, had won the five-year global broadcast and digital rights to the IPL for $ 2.55 billion, a sum that has been described as from being `staggering’ to `over-priced’ to simply OTT.

    In September, when asked how the company planned to monetise the IPL, Star India chairman and CEO Uday Shankar (now elevated as head of 21st Century Fox Asia) in an interview to Indiantelevision.com had said: “All I know is that IPL is a very powerful tournament and cricket runs really deep in everybody’s bones in this country. To be successful, you just need to work on intensifying and heightening the experience of cricket further.”

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    http://www.indiantelevision.com/specials/event-coverage/asia-tv-forum/17-to-be-year-of-survival-for-vr-market-161209

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  • MIB mulls IPL telecast on Doordarshan

    MIB mulls IPL telecast on Doordarshan

    MUMBAI: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting may bring the Indian Premier League under the ambit of events of national importance. Therefore, Star India’s coveted cricket property may be telecast simultaneously on public broadcaster Doordarshan.

    According to reports, the ministry is working on a proposal make live matches available on Doordarshan and has asked the sports ministry to look into the matter.

    Currently, the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, the Olympics, and select cricket, hockey, football, and tennis events fall under the ambit of events of national importance.

  • Rural India props up PKL 5 viewership with 75 per cent contribution

    Rural India props up PKL 5 viewership with 75 per cent contribution

    MUMBAI: It was five years ago that kabbadi went from being a game played in playgrounds to captivating the largely cricket-crazy sports audience in India. The fifth season of Vivo Pro Kabaddi League (PKL), India’s most watched non-cricketing property, garnered 1.6 billion impressions for the live telecast according to Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC).

    PKL pocketed 3.3 billion gross impressions which is calculated at 30 minutes interval as per the data given by the broadcaster. There is some duplication involved in the gross impressions since the same person could have viewed the programme on two occasions.

    Surprisingly, 75 per cent of the total viewership came from rural areas and 43 per cent of viewers were female. Star Sports First, the free to air channel, attracted 31 per cent of the total viewers as compared to its pay counterpart, Star Sports 2, which contributed to just 10 per cent. Indeed, the first week of the tournament itself led to Star Sports First leading the genre with 148,506 impressions.

     The season saw its opening in Hyderabad and finale in Chennai with 12 cities in between. The finale witnessed an 83 per cent rise over the previous year, garnering 25.4 million impressions. The fourth season finale got 13.9 million impressions.

    The 140 games in the fifth season grabbed 1.6 billion impressions vis-à-vis 561.1 million impressions during the 60 games last year. The average impressions per game in season 5 were 11 million as compared to season 4’s 9 million, a 22 per cent increase.

    The league also attracted new fans, including kids (2-14 years) and teenagers (15-21 years) with 19 per cent and 21 per cent share in the total number of viewers, respectively. Tamil Nadu was one of the most successful new markets with the league being televised on Star Sports 1 Tamil. PKL was also broadcast in Kannada on Star Suvarna Plus and Star Maa Movies in Telugu, apart from English and Hindi.

    This makes a strong case for advertisers to hop on board a property in which they had very little confidence in its inaugural season. The latest season saw a string of sponsors and partners for individual teams and several brands joined the bandwagon as the matches progressed. Sponsors included TVS Motors, Bajaj Electricals, and Gillette Mach3 Turbo.

    Star India EVP and head ad sales Anil Jayaraj had earlier revealed that the sponsorship revenue for this year was 320 per cent higher this year. The sponsors make approximately 15 times the return on their investment.

    Star India managing director Sanjay Gupta says that the current season’s aim was to push the boundaries. “India has truly embraced kabaddi. With an expanded league, there were 12 teams competing in more than 130 matches, spread across 13 weeks. That the love for kabaddi is cutting across geographies and demographics is self-evident. It is very heartening to see this response from millions of fans across the country, which has emphatically re-established kabaddi’s position as the most watched non-cricketing sport synonymous with the Vivo Pro Kabaddi League.”

     

  • DD Sports & Star Sports gain highest OTS in genre: Chrome DM

    DD Sports & Star Sports gain highest OTS in genre: Chrome DM

    MUMBAI: The sports genre marked the highest opportunity to see (OTS) among all categories in week 44 of Chrome Data Analytics & Media with 0.92 per cent growth. In this category, DD Sports gained the highest OTS with 92.7 per cent and Star Sports was the second most benefitted in terms of OTS with 81.7 per cent on an all-India including 1L+ market basis.

    OTS is the actual census based percentage connectivity of a channel spread across 81 million homes.

    English news genre ranked second in the gainers category with a growth of 0.48 per cent OTS in six metros. Rajyasabha TV gained the highest OTS with 95.3 per cent whereas Loksabha TV gained the second slot on the list with 94.9 per cent OTS.

    The third position in the gainer’s list of OTS was grabbed by the kids genre with a growth of 0.48 per cent on an all-India including 1L+ market basis. In this category, OTS of Nickelodeon was leading the genre with 88.0 per cent whereas Cartoon Network stood second with 85.1 per cent OTS.

    Hindi movies genre stood in fourth position in the list with 0.39 per cent growth in which Max lead with 94.3 per cent whereas Star Gold grabbed second position with 94.2 per cent OTS on an HSM (Hindi-speaking market) excluding 1L market basis.

    Last but not the least, the fifth position in gainers list is taken by the infotainment genre with a growth of 0.36 per cent. In this category, NGC topped the OTS chart with 91.0 per cent whereas History TV 18 was the second topper with 90.5 per cent on an all-India including 1L+ market basis.

    Among the losers, music genre was the most affected genre with a drop of 6.96 per cent OTS on an all-India excluding 1L market basis with Sony Mix topping the chart with 90.2 followed by 9XM with 89.9 per cent OTS.

    The religious genre recorded a fall of 0.58 per cent OTS on an all-India excluding 1L market basis. In this category, Sanskar grabbed highest OTS with 95.2 per cent followed by Aastha with 93.5 per cent OTS.

    English movies reserved the third position in the losers list with a drop of 0.52 per cent. Movies Now and Star Movies bagged the top two positions with 54.1 per cent and 47.7 per cent, respectively, in six metros.

    English GEC took the fourth position in the losers list with a drop of 0.26 per cent. In this category, Colors Infinity got first position with 46.6 per cent and Comedy Central reserved the second position with 44.9 per cent OTS in six metros.

    Last among the losers was the business news genre that stood at the fifth position with a fall of 0.23 per cent OTS with Zee Business leading the chart with 85.0 per cent, followed by CNBC Awaaz with 83.5 per cent OTS in six metros.

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