ESPNcricinfo leaps from digital to TV

By stepping up TV, website and app is tapping into ESPN's core strengths, evolving allround brand

Twenty-four years after it was first launched by a British researcher at the University of Minnesota in the US, Cricinfo, now ESPNcricinfo, a sports news website and app, will make a high-impact launch on television. With a parentage as strong as ESPN’s in TV (it is among the premier sports broadcasters in the world), the website and app’s full-scale plunge into the broadcast medium is a logical extension, say experts.

Yet, the jump from digital to TV is opposite to what most players in the space are doing. Star India has used Hotstar, its digital platform, to increase its presence in sports beyond TV. Sony Pictures Network India (SPN), has also done the same, using sports to push Sony Liv, its digital destination, aggressively. 

But experts say signs of a big jump into TV for ESPNcricinfo was evident for a while now. The first tentative steps were taken last year when ESPNcricinfo Match Point, a show for key events like the T20 World Cup (on Star) and the India Premier League (on Sony), were launched by the website.  

Its latest offering ‘Turn and Bounce’ will be a weekly show on TV as well as digital, Ramesh Kumar, vice-president & head of ESPN India and South Asia, said, reflecting two things: Its collaboration with Sony and the evolution of the brand into a multimedia platform.

 

       Small to Big

• ESPNcricinfo averages more than 150 million visits per month that account for nearly 1.5 billion minutes of engagement from India and the sub-continent.
• ESPNcricinfo is the most visited sports website/app in India and the sub-continent among fans aged 25 years and above.
• Fans across the sub-continent watch millions of videos every month on ESPNcricinfo - with average monthly video views increasing nearly 230% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2017.
• Globally, mobile visits have increased over 100 percent in the past year with the India sub-continent over-indexing significantly

‘Turn and Bounce’ will be aired on Sony Six and Sony Six HD, the flagship sports channels from the Sony stable.

According to BARC, the Sony sports channels, including Ten, which was acquired from Zee last year, commanded close to 55 per cent of sports viewership in the first half of 2017. Considering the network has a slate of India matches (for overseas tours) coming up, ‘Turn and Bounce’ will be able to reach more people, especially in the non-metro markets, experts said. 

While ESPNcricinfo has been around for more than two decades, expanding the brand to TV will help it capture audiences that have not yet adapted to watching videos on mobile.

What it also does is increase the opportunity for monetisation, since TV ad-rates per spot (one ad-spot is 10 seconds) is expensive when compared with the inventory rate on digital. However, Jasdeep Pannu, head of ESPN India television initiatives says that while the opportunity for monetisation (on TV) will be seized, it will not happen immediately.

“Monetising content is an important goal for any content creator. In the long run this value will be realised. At the moment, we are focused on gratifying consumers on TV and digital,” he says. 

Incidentally, even as ESPNcricinfo makes its presence felt on TV, the website and app will be seeing an upgrade, marking its relaunch. The upgrade will allow for more sharing of videos on social media, greater personalisation and thrust on shorter content formats, Kumar says.

It is also part of the tech backbone powering the website as a whole. The new Content Management System (CMS) will allow journalists and storytellers to use a variety of formats to put stories across in an innovative way and explore options to breakdown information with ease, he adds. 

The relaunch of the site and the app will be supported  by  a  360-degree marketing campaign. The campaign will focus on the different kinds of cricket fans and how each of the new key product features helps these fans enjoy the game better. The idea is to talk about the brand’s growing tribe of users as it continues to deliver engaging content. 

ESPNcricinfo will also run activations around this theme, integrate the core offerings of the upgrade into its video shows and air promotions of the relaunch on television. For now, the brand’s  hands seem full.