India-West Indies series to be low scorer for Ten Sports

Low viewer interest following India's early exit from the ICC T20 World Cup, plus the absence of star cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag from the team have brought down average spot rates on Ten Sports over 50 per cent against what advertisers paid on STAR Cricket, the host broadcaster for the T20 World Cup, and SET Max, broadcaster for the Indian Premier League (IPL). Ten Sports is the host broadcaster for India's upcoming tour of the West Indies starting June 26. India is scheduled to play four One Day Internationals (ODIs) from June 26 to July 5.

Media agency sources said the average 10-second spot rates on Ten Sports is around Rs 1.3 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakh.

 

The average spot rates on STAR Cricket for ICC T20 World Cup stood at around Rs 2.8 lakh to Rs 3 lakh for the initial India matches and nearly the same for the key IPL 2 matches on SET Max.

Ten Sports was expecting the average spot rates to go over Rs 2.25 lakh had India done well at the T20 World Cup, media agency sources said.

Ten Sports now claims to have sold 85 per cent of its on-air inventory to advertisers like Tata Indicom, Honda SIEL, Bajaj Auto, Nokia and Reliance ADAG.

The channel also claims to have sold 10-seconds spots to several advertisers like Visa, Tata Sky, ITC and others.

For Ten Sports, the series is critical because it comes nearly a year after it aired the India-Sri Lanka series last year.

Ten Sports currently has the telecast rights for West Indies, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa and Zimbabwe, the countries that are not hosting India for a longer-duration series anytime soon.

“There seems to be a lot of interest in this series despite team India's poor performance in the T20 World Cup.

I would attribute this to the fact that it is the first ODI series after a long gap,” said Rukin Kizilbash, GM, Taj Television India, the company that owns Ten Sports channel.

According to media agency sources, between the five co-presenting, and associate sponsors and the spot-advertisers, Ten Sports might be able to make Rs 20-22 crore from the four ODIs, 25-30 per cent less than what it could have earned if India could have qualified for the finals of T20 World Cup.

“We always buy on a sports channel based on the line-up of sports broadcast it offers throughout a year or a particular season.

Ten Sports is a peculiar case, as it has a limited inventory of Indian cricket. Therefore, unless advertisers have a clear marketing objective, they will not be spending big bucks on India-West Indies series,” said a senior media planner requesting anonymity.

Milind Bade, general manager (marketing), Bajaj Auto, one of the co-presenting sponsors for the India-West Indies series on Ten Sports, said: “Cricket gets high male viewership and they are our primary target consumers for the new Bajaj Pulsar that we are launching. We have made a strategic investment on Ten Sports and in line with our marketing objective.” Bajaj Auto had last spent heavily cricket during IPL in April and May.

Sources said Honda Siel, the other co-sponsor for the series may spend around Rs 6 crore to promote Honda Jazz during the four ODIs on Ten Sports. Honda Jazz was launched earlier this month.

Reliance ADA group will be spending Rs 5-6 crore on its DTH and non-telecom business, while Nokia has bought inventory to promote its new handsets.

However, going by the poor ratings of the last-two India matches in the recently concluded T20 World Cup in England, media planners are not betting big on the upcoming India-West Indies series.

“Considering that it will be telecast on prime-time (8 pm onwards) and the going rates are what they are, advertisers will get good mileage at less cost from the India-West Indies series,” said Mona Jain, head of strategic investments at Indian Media Exchange.