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Cricket fatigue leads to fall in viewership and ad-rates

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Varada Bhat Mumbai
Last Updated : Jan 21 2013 | 12:53 AM IST

Despite the convincing win in the first test against West Indies, an overkill of cricket over the last few months has put television viewership and advertisement rates on a sticky wicket with the ad rates almost falling by 35- 40 per cent.

Neo Cricket, the official broadcaster of the on going India-West Indies series, had given a 40-60 percent discount on its initial asking rate of Rs 4.5 lakh for a 10 second ad spot, said media buyers.

According to TAM Sports, a television sports viewership tracker, India's tour to England (5 ODIs) clocked 1.79 viewership rating, the Champions League of 1.64 while England Tour of India on the other hand, registered an average tournament rating of 3.07, which media planners said was not encouraging.

Some advertisers who have traditionally been associated with the sport said with too much cricket being played , they may look to advertise only on big properties like Indian Premier League and opt out of bi-lateral series as they do not offer great return on investment.

"Now cricket is directly competing with reality shows on television like Kaun Banega Crorepati, Big Boss, other sports like Formula one and football and even news channels with a lot of important political developments taking place,” said a leading advertiser.

For instance, telecom giant Bharati Airtel pulled out of the title sponsorship of the Champions League even before the three-year deal ended and announced its association as title sponsor of the India GP.

The Korean durables and electronics maker LG which was the global ICC partner for the World Cup and bought several spot rates during IPL-4, has not invested much on cricket this festive season despite the India playing at home ground. The company had earn-marked around Rs 25-30 crore during September to November season.

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"Cricket is failing to command the premium that it did a year ago other than for a big event like the World Cup. The huge number of matches this year has led to injuries and fall in quality of play. We see that increasingly advertisers are going for big sports properties," said Hiren Pandit, GroupM India's managing partner.

Media sources said if it wasn’t for the World Cup and the IPL, other cricket tournaments would have commanded at least 20 per cent higher ad rates. The first six months of 2011 have been high on cricketing fixtures with almost Rs 1,800 crore of television-advertising revenue to channels such as ESPN, Star Cricket and Set Max.

The trend began with the India-West Indies series held in June, which was aired on Ten Sports. The channel was able to get just five sponsors, including Tata Docomo and Perfetti Van Melle, for the series.

However, some media planners are optimistic that the interest level should go up after India's wins in recently concluded series with England and the first test on the ongoing series against West India.

"After the one-sided India-England tour people simply stopped watching. Champions League anyway does not have high ratings. Hopefully with these recent wins, the viewership could go up," said Sai Nagesh, managing director and CEO, Polestar Content and Media.

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First Published: Nov 15 2011 | 12:17 AM IST

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