| How was the FIFA experience? |
| The event did extremely well and this has been borne out in the ratings that blasted past all the previous numbers. The advertisement revenue multiplied eight times. |
| Which way do you see the ad rates in football headed? |
| Advertisement rates will track the ratings and they can increase by 50-60 per cent. Even in FIFA, some of the spots we sold were comparable to cricket. It is for the first time that football rivalled cricket in ad rates as well as ratings. |
| One hasn't seen too much cricket on ESPN Star of late... |
| There's tonnes of cricket coming up. There will be India's tour of South Africa, then the Australia tour, the Asia Cup. In the next 18 months, we have all the cricket on our platform except the World Cup. |
| How was the second edition of Premier Hockey League? Is it losing steam? |
| No, nothing of that sort. It was better received this year with the number of spectators outnumbering those for Ranji matches. We got advertisers like Indian Airlines, Western Union, Perfetti and Smithkline Beecham on board. |
| The third edition will be even bigger and better. There is a perception that it was big the first time. The truth is that you launch the event only once and the perceived noise level is maximum at that time. |
| Are you consciously trying to build a brand image that goes beyond cricket? |
| We have always done that. Our endeavour has been to market as many sports as we can. We are a sports channel, not a cricket channel. |
| We have that kind of a breadth and we have invested a lot of marketing dollars behind non-cricket events. Cricket markets itself and you can't teach cricket to the Indian masses. |
| How is sports broadcasting evolving in India? |
| One can see a fair amount of competition coming in. There is bound to be a shake-out. It is expensive, requires a specific skill set and content where only the players with pedigree will survive. Also, there isn't enough sport for newer sports channels to fill in all the time, unless they start showing beach volleyball. |
| The list of events of national importance on which feed has to be shared with Prasar Bharati came out sometime ago. What is your stance on the issue? |
| We have maintained throughout that exclusivity is important. We have shared our feed in the past and we would do so in the future but a differentiation window for exclusivity ought to be there. |
| Content acquisition and building is very expensive and the costs are already going through the roof, increasing by 100-200 per cent. One cannot see all that money just wash off because of this... |
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