Back at the crease

TELEVISION: Viewers are coming back to cricket, and Star Cricket plans to cash in on the renewed interest.

A couple of months ago, there were no takers left for cricket, thanks to the drubbing India got at the World Cup in the West Indies. Some companies recalled their advertising campaigns featuring cricketers, while still others decided to put no more marketing money in the sport. In short, it was curtains for cricket.

Cut to the present. This week, ESPN-Star Sports will launch its all-cricket channel, Star Cricket, with the three-test series between India and England. This, it hopes, will be a new and fruitful innings.

The channel will more than triple the sports broadcaster's revenues to over Rs 1,000 crore in the next year and a half, an ESPN-Star Sports official claims. Last year, it had raked in Rs 250-300 crore in advertising and distribution revenues.

"Almost half of the cable and satellite homes in India are already watching us. We are confident that Star Cricket will be seen across all cable and satellite homes in India before the first ball is bowled in the India-England Test series," says R C Venkateish, managing director, ESPN Software India Pvt Ltd, the company that runs the sports channels.

To be sure, there's a lot of cricket coming up. India will finish the year with seven international fixtures including the first Twenty20 format World Cup in South Africa in September. ESPN-Star Sports is betting high on the eight-nine international cricket series over the next 18 months on its network of three channels.

"Cricket will be our leading aggregator of advertising revenue with a number of exclusive test matches coming on Star Cricket," the official says.

According to the ESPN-Star Sports official, advertising deals worth Rs 400 crore have already been struck with leading advertisers for these matches. These deals will be spread over India's tour of England (July-September) and later during the tour of Australia (December-March 2008).

Big brands including Airtel, Reliance and Maruti have already signed up as sponsors with a budget of Rs 45-50 crore each. There are a number of associate sponsors as well, the official informs.

According to experts, the sports broadcasting market in the country is expected to generate Rs 1,200-1,500 crore of advertising revenue. Though the World Cup debacle was a setback for the sport, advertisers are likely to come back in the absence of anything else, they say.

Still, there are a couple of issues that ESPN-Star Sports will need to sort out before it can ride the gravy train.

According to the new law on sports telecast, private broadcasters have to share the signals of all one-day international cricket matches with state-owned Doordarshan, while retaining the exclusive telecast rights for the international test matches involving India.

The second issue is, what will the new channel be priced at? Currently, negotiations are on between ESPN-Star Sports and leading cable operator associations and direct-to-home companies over the price of Star Cricket.

As per the tariff order fixed for non-conditional access homes by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, ESPN and Star Sports together cost Rs 42 per subscriber.