World T20: ESPN Star raises ad rates by 80 %

Ashish Khurana - Televisionpoint.com | Mumbai
ICC World T20, to be contested by 12 countries including last year's champions India and runners-up Pakistan, will be played in England from June 5 to June 21, 2009.

The event, to be telecast by Star Cricket, the cricket centric channel from the ESPN Star Sports (ESS) bouquet, is tipped to generate a lot of viewer interest and advertisers too.

The forthcoming World T20 will be viewed by as many as 216 countries across the world. The sports broadcaster has lined-up many interesting on-air initiatives to make the telecast entertaining and engaging.

The sports broadcaster has ensured that the commentary panel has representation from almost all cricket playing countries so that the viewers can get a flavor of each team as showcase their talent on the big stage.

Despite the cricket deluge, advertisers are not complaining about potential viewership fatigue. They are snapping up commercial advertising spots that are being sold at a high premium by ESS.

ESS has sold television ad-spots worth over Rs 220 crore for the event. The broadcaster has also raised its advertising rates for ICC World T20 by 80 per cent this year to Rs 4 lakh per 10 seconds from Rs 2.25 lakh last year.

R C Venkateish, managing director, ESPN Software India, the company that owns the rights to broadcast the event in India, says, "In terms of on-air sales, we have written 80 per cent more revenue as compared to the last edition."

Venkateish said the company has an impressive line-up of advertisers for the ICC World event. "We have signed 10 sponsors and an additional 20 corporates advertisers for spot buys on live as well as pre-post programming." said Venkateish.

Media buyers estimate the average spot rate at Rs 3.5 lakh. Star Cricket has managed to rope in several advertisers that were not too visible in the second season of the domestic cricket tournament Indian Premier League (IPL).

Tarun Nigam, executive director, Starcom Worldwide, said, "The broadcaster was in talks with potential advertisers very early which helped it to comfortably sell the inventory."

For instance, Reliance ADAG, which pulled out of IPL, has placed Reliance Mobile as one of the co-presenting sponsors of the T20 World Cup, along with Pepsi and Reebok. Hewlett-Packard, Maruti Suzuki, Perfetti, Nokia, Adani Group, Visa and Max New York Life are the associate sponsors of the tournament.

One of the factors expected to affect the sale of ad spots by ESS was the just concluded IPL-II, which attracted fewer eyeballs compared to last year.

Venkateish said, "We believe the interest level in T20 is still very high. Last year the initial three-four matches showed lower ratings but ratings improved along with India's performance, especially for the matches against Pakistan."

Basabdutta Chowdhary, chief executive officer, Madison Media, said, "Unlike the IPL, here international teams will be playing against each other and there will be more fervour among Indian cricket buffs. This has allowed ESS to sell most of their inventory despite the slow economic conditions which has affected marketing expenditure of companies."

The India vs Pakistan T20 final on September 24, 2007 created history with the TVRs touching a peak of 15.2. ESPN and Star Cricket had a combined rating of 21.2 and a channel share of 47.2 per cent, taking large numbers of viewers away from normally popular reality TV shows being shown at the same time.