The Rio 2016 Olympics are set to roll out into millions of TV homes across Star Sports 1, 2, 3 and 4 and Star Sports HD 1,2,3, and 4. Plus, of course, it will be available for free to Hotstar’s massive digital audiences acrossIndia.
This is without doubt a double whammy for sports broadcasting in India, because for the first time, a non-cricket sports series will receive TV playout on as many as eight channels – unprecedented in terms of playout received even by the biggest of Cricket in India from a single network – plus the biggest digital content platform in India, Hotstar. Going by its recent IPL performance, Hotstarhas and will singlehandedly provide this time tooa bigger audience than most other non-Star sports channels could provide. Also remember, it will definitely be unique, unduplicated viewing while the user engages with Hotstar. Our guesstimate is Hotstar has been downloaded over 70 million times, if not more, in about a year and a half since it was launched. And that’s a formidable number.
‘Catch Every Medal Live!’
Star India is headlining its consumer communication for the year’s biggest sporting spectacle with: Catch Every Medal Live! The Rio 2016 Olympic Games will be aired across eight channels on a 24×7 basis, in English and Hindi. Together, Star Sports and Hotstar will broadcast 3000+ hours of live content from the Olympics, offering the Indian sports fans every opportunity to catch every medal live.
A panel of international and Indian Olympians as well as sports experts will share, analyse and connect with the Indian viewers as live actionunfolds at the Olympics. This select list of eminent sports personalities includes Ian Thorpe, PrakashPadukone, Anjali Bhagwat, VirenRasquinha and RehanPoncha. Holding them together would be the credible voice of presenter Paula Malai Ali in English, while in Hindi, DivyaJaitley, the well-known face amongst Indian sports presenters will be engaging the viewers.
At the same time, Hotstar will roll out an unprecedented coverage of the Olympics with 14 live feeds consistently and up to 36 concurrent seeds at peak on the Olympics video player, available to users on demand through the event. Coverage of Olympics has created new digital benchmarks in the past in North America and Europe, and with Hotstar emerging as a primary screen in affluent metro homes in India, the platform is seeking to break new records on the breadth of coverage and viewership.
“While Hotstar is covering Olympics for the first time, we are excited that we are bringing an all-round coverage of the Olympics for the Indian digital user that will be the best in the world,” says Ajit Mohan, CEO, Hotstar. “Like in our coverage of other sporting events, our focus will be not just on making every moment of the Olympics available to the fans but also provide them the ability to create personalised, interactive experiences that allow them to follow and watch what is of unique interest to them.”
Central to Hotstar’s offering to sports fans will be the rollout of an interactive, data-rich Olympic player on the web where users will have the option to switch between the 14 live feeds, have access to day-wise listing of events and medals tally, and the ability to personalise the experience by following specific countries and sports disciplines.
Befitting:
It is befitting that it is the Star Network which will take this oldest, biggest and grandest spectacle of non-Cricket sports in the world, across the length and breadth of India. The network has been assiduously investing in and working on non-cricket sports in a truly strategic way. One that is long winded and traverses a difficult, costly road no other sports broadcaster in India has had to guts or gall to tread, because it required major investments made by a strategic and well-founded belief in creating and building, from the ground up, other sports properties which would necessarily have to be in non-cricket sports. The belief as to invest in and grow leagues across multiple sports genres to help create opportunities and value for sports and sports lovers, and in keeping with the network’s inspirational baseline. Now baselines can be like cosmetic mental-messaging feel-good hoardings, or they can be missions a corporate lives up to.
In 2013, the network announced it was out to support multiple sports genres to help create opportunities and value for sports and for sports lovers, to build a platform that would help nurture heroes out of the millions of passionate, young sports fans across India. Plus to help sports be the trigger for creating and nurturing outstanding new opportunities for India’s youth. You cannot inspire a billion imaginations just by buying some broadcast rights — you have to plant the seeds and nurture the fields, and whether across programming with shows like Satyamev Jayate, or in their decision to go ahead and develop a multi-sports culture in India, Star India did just that.
It went ahead and began to create non-Cricket leagues to support and grow non-cricket sports through the cricket experience and with the advantage of production and marketing values that the best Cricketing series would receive. Star invested indiverse, premium sports content, and in providing multi-platform access to that sports content, and to developing local leagues.
Showing the way:
It not only picked up the gauntlet of investing and persisting with to grow non-cricket sports in India, it has also shown the way to other networks to try to follow suit, even if they’re taking only tiny nibbles just yet. Consolidation is fine, but where are the properties? Low or high – there are no sports properties fruits hanging for the other networks to pluck.
Consider: the sporting events that Star Sports broadcasts include Cricket coverage under the purview of the International Cricket Council (ICC), Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Cricket Australia, England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Asian Cricket Council (ACC). Apart from Cricket, it has also created and owns the biggest non-Cricket leagues in India, which include Pro Kabaddi; the Hero Indian Super League (ISL), the Hockey India League, the Premier Badminton League, and several other top international leagues and properties like the English Premier League, Bundesliga; Badminton World Federation (BWF) events, Formula 1; Wimbledon, The French Open and International Premier Tennis League. Hotstar already owns the IPL rights for Digital till the next edition, and Star Sports has rolled up its sleeves to acquire the TV rights for IPL, the battle for which will be a high point in the Television rights acquisition business.
Create or perish:
So, the competition will have to do what Star realized and did – nurture their own properties, and not just from a broadcast-to-win-audiences-and-advertisers perspective, which admittedly is what every network is in the business for, but to create, produce and present new sports properties with the same scale as the biggest Cricket events. To make them popular and thereby to inspire and spur local authorities with the growing popularity and employment and business generation potential of those sports, tonurture them at the ground and instrastructure level. Now that’s a huge ask. One that Star India did.
The tide is high
And now the 50-day countdown to the biggest multi-sport event – the Rio 2016 Olympic Games is here. The games which begin on August 5, 2016 in Brazil, will witness the largest ever Olympic contingent from India. And the television and digital play out of the event on Star India will benefit the network by further cementing the popularity of non-cricket sports, pushing the distribution deals and placements for the Sports bouquet across the biggest addressable markets of India in DAS III and DAS IV areas, doing likewise for Hotstar.
“Star Sports has been at the forefront of establishing a multi-sport culture in India,’ says NitinKukreja, CEO, Star Sports. “While cricket continues to reach new heights, Indian sports fans have already shown their love for kabaddi and football. The Olympics are the pinnacle of a multi-sports event, and as India prepares to send its largest ever contingent, Star Sports is leaving no stone unturned to provide the most comprehensive access to Indian sports fans.”
What that should work like never before? India has never witnessed the Olympic Games in the manner in which Star Sports can package and present them, and this time, a massive digital audience of young Indians – always with the loudest and most viral voices on social media — will consume and discuss the entire offerings. Add to that a 50-day buildup across a network that already reaches over 650 million individuals every week in India.
Further sweetners will be the medal hopefuls from India, and national pride unites us like nothing else does. So the older, stronger, more visionary brands that profess an emotional cord with India, will want to look at non-Cricket sports. They are assured that at least 7.5 to 8 hours from the scheduled 4.30 pm to 4.30 am IST RIO Olympics schedule would be of great relevance for sports lovers across ages.
So, given that Star India has pushed the countdown for the 17-day extravaganza a full 50 days before the opening ceremony, one foresees both a strong buildup of expectation across consumers and the trade, and, indeed, as D-day approaches, a bit of a rush when any initially ‘reluctant’ advertising brand will be forced to finally blink first.
2012 to first end-2015 were intensive investment years for Star Sports. With the beginning of the 50-day run-up to Rio 2016 Olympic Games’ start also begins the countdown to the good times when the network should begin reaping significant rewards and benefits for all its investments.
