IPL: “FMCG advertisers are back to cricket,” highlights Star India’s Ajit Varghese, ET BrandEquity
Star Sports shared that in 2023, the broadcaster could not meet its target and in fact, the numbers were lower than in 2022 when they closed around INR 3,000 crores of advertising money for TV broadcast only. “Situation, this year is better than 2023, but a significant hike in ad revenue is something that cannot be expected in this current economic condition and fragmentation of consumption. Brands are cautious, and discussions in boardrooms are more around profitability. Also, the recent downfall of once-big buyers of Cricket is bound to have an impact. Having said so, IPL will sell as it always does, at what price point is the question,” said a media planning expert who wished not to be named.
Highlighting where the growth will come from, Varghese points to the large advertisers. “FMCG that remained away from Cricket has now come in and that’s the biggest category of advertisers in India. Apart from them, there is Auto. Also, during the summer, Durables and many other categories like Travel, go big by launching new campaigns. These factors will continue to grow advertising on television broadcast of IPL,” he adds. Since last year, Star has opened all the regional language feeds (Non-Hindi and English) for local advertisers at a different price point, and Varghese opines that the separate inventory helped rope in more brands and grow the overall number of clients buying the broadcast. He also feels, once these brands grow and aim for scale, they will opt for the national feed. Apart from Sports, Disney Star has a wide bouquet of General Entertainment Channels including Star Plus and Varghese informs that the team is open to clubbing the inventory.“What I would like to highlight here is that we have a panel of around 100 experts (Pundits - primarily retired cricketers) on our panel and our wrap-around show - ‘Cricket Live’ reaches out to more than 300 million viewers. We can create content around these experts and plug the brands into the content to enable Influencer Marketing opportunities for them. We can even bring in some of our GEC stars to the studio and create segments, these are the partnership opportunities that only we can provide,” Varghese asserts.
For the upcoming IPL, Disney Star has announced the launch of 'Startup Power Play' which will offer one startup per day the spotlight to showcase their brand or product story and the Varghese pits it as a solution that will enable startups to harness the platform's potential to amplify their offerings and connect with consumers on a massive scale. Offered at an introductory price point, Varghese feels this will attract new advertisers.While he is bullish about the FMCG category, a couple of marketers in large FMCGs ETBrandEquity.Com spoke to, called for a “rationalisation” of pricing. “India remains a Television dominant market and Cricket gets big numbers but for IPL to find the favour of FMCG, it has to come at that price point,” stated a marketer with FMCG off the record.
Going back to the Super Bowl analogy, the recently concluded edition was reported as the most-watched telecast of all time, reaching 123.4 million viewers. The slots during the telecast were sold for USD 7 million which is INR 58,09,66,750.00 for 30-seconds. The broadcasters, reportedly sold the entire inventory and met all targets. Now if Disney Star manages to attract the advertisers, command a premium and meet its revenue targets is something that remains to be seen.