Sony garners revenue of Rs 1,200 cr from IPL 9

This is a 20% growth in revenue over previous IPL season, driven largely by change in ad rates

Broadcaster Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) has mopped up Rs 1,200 crore in advertising revenue from Indian Premier League's ninth season, a growth of 20 per cent over last year.

It had clocked an advertising revenue of Rs 1,000 crore from IPL 8.

"We have had a 20 per cent growth in revenue. This was largely based on the change in (advertising) rates," SPN India President Rohit Gupta told PTI.

SPN had hiked its advertisement rate by 15 per cent for IPL this year.

The spot rate for sponsors was Rs 5.25 lakh. The spot buy rate was Rs 5.75 lakh for standard definition channels, while for HD, price was between Rs 1.50 lakh to Rs 1.80 lakh for 10-seconds.

Gupta had earlier said that there was an unprecedented interest from advertisers for this year's IPL and it was for the first time that two months prior to the start of the tournament, they had sold out all their inventory.

The broadcaster had aired the IPL on Sony Max in Hindi. Sony Six carried the Tamil, Telugu and Bengali language feeds, besides Hindi. Sony Six HD and Sony ESPN channels carried the English feed.

SPN, which has the exclusive television broadcast rights for IPL till 2017, had three presenting sponsors on board this year from two in the previous season.

Chinese handset maker Oppo, which signed up as one of the presenting sponsors this year, had taken 240 seconds per match, the highest in IPL.

The other presenting sponsors -- Vodafone and Amazon -- bought 210 seconds per match.

Oppo, Maruti, Coca-Cola, Tata Sky were some of the new brands that came on board this year, Gupta said.

"This year, handset category and the e-commerce categories were the two big ones. Handset contributed about 23-24 per cent, and e-commerce was about 17-18 per cent of our advertising revenues," he said.

SPN also has the rights for the UEFA Euro 2016 football championship which will be held in France from June 10 to July 10. The broadcaster has sold about 70 per cent of its inventory for this event.

"Football is the next big thing. We have been able to establish a rate of over Rs 2 lakh for 10 seconds for Euro. We have got Gionee as the title sponsor.

"Football is starting to see a lot of traction now among advertisers, especially brands which are targeting the youth," Gupta said.