Mumbai : India’s exit from the cricket World Cup has taken away broadcaster Star India’s power to charge premium on the advertisement spots it has kept aside for Sunday’s final, say media buying firms. The rates for Thursday’s India-Australia semi-final match were, in fact, higher than what Star had hoped for an Australia-New Zealand final, which is going to be the case now, they say.
And, in any case, ad sales for World Cup broadcasting didn’t pick up this time, said the head of a top media buying agency. According to the chief executive of another media buying firm, The buzz was missing because the timing of the matches hasn’t been prime time. “There were too many easy games. And, the tournament was away from India, so the home ground advantage was missing. Besides, IPL, being right after the World Cup, has given advertisers a choice to decide which tournament would give them better returns on investment.” Both executives didn’t want to be named.
Cricket-crazy India is the biggest market for the sport. Indian companies such as Reliance Communications and MRF are among the main commercial partners of the International Cricket Council.
Though millions in India will still glue to the TV on Sunday when Australia play New Zealand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, many may skip watching the final. And the fervour will be missing, too.
“India’s contribution to the ICC in terms of revenue is the maximum across all countries. How India performs during the World Cup is directly proportional to ad rates and TRPs of the tournament,” said Basabdatta Chowdhuri, chief executive at Madison Media Groupowned Platinum Media, which buys ad spots for Godrej and ITC.
But, a Star spokesperson said Thursday’s result “will bear no impact” on the final. This World Cup has registered 50% more advertisers than the previous edition and 60% more than that of the Indian Premier League, Star said.
Star may have already sold most of the ad spots. But, typically, broadcasters keep aside about 5-10% inventory for the last few matches of all tournaments to maximise sales. In the last World Cup, in 2011 which India won, Star had managed to sell ad spots for the India-Pakistan semi-final match at Rs 20 lakh per 10 seconds, and the India-Sri Lanka final at Rs 25 lakh per 10 seconds.
For individual matches, Star sold average airtime at about Rs 4.5 lakh for 10-second slots. Individual ad spots for the India-Australia semifinal touched Rs 15 lakh.
Star will not be able to charge a premium over this rate for the final, said Vinit Karnik, national director at sports and live events at media buying firm GroupM ESP.
“Any advertiser who had bought into the World Cup would have obviously factored in the risk of India not playing the finals,” said Navin Khemka, managing partner (north and east region) at Maxus, which represents personal care firms L’Oreal and Dabur.
“But additional one-off advertisers, who had planned to buy on Star for the finals despite steep rates, will not do so now.”
PepsiCo, one of the sponsors of the World Cup, in fact, chose to advertise its IPL campaign, ‘Crash the IPL’, on Star’s World Cup broadcasts.
