ESPN eyes Rs 40 cr from Fifa World Cup

ESPN STAR Sports is looking to garner approximately Rs 40 crore from advertisement revenue during the upcoming Fifa World Cup 2006, scheduled to begin on June 9. According to industry experts, Ten Sports, launched in India during the last Fifa World Cup in 2002, grossed nearly Rs 10 crore from advertisements.

"Nearly 75 million Indians watched the soccer world cup telecast last time, and we expect it to go up to at least 100 million this time, which would be an all-time high. We are happy to see interest picking up in non-cricket sports among the younger section of the audience," said R C Venkateish, MD, ESPN Software India Pvt Ltd.

The planned telecast of the first-ever Hindi feed is also expected to contribute to this quantum leap in grabbing eyeballs. To facilitate this, the channel is organising meetings with cable operators across various cities advising them to switch to the Hindi feed in large Hindi-speaking pockets.

While ESPN STAR Sports declined to specify average ad rates, industry experts claim the 30-second ad spots to cost in the region of Rs 1.2-1.5 lakh.

The co-presenting sponsors, Coca-Cola India and Airtel, have a packaged deal of four ad slots of 30 seconds, translating into 256 ad slots each across the 64 matches in the tournament. Coke's investment in ESPN STAR Sports is believed to be around Rs 6 crore.

The other co-presenting sponsor and exclusive mobile partner, Airtel, while keeping its cards on the financials close to its chest, told Business Standard that it would be launching several mobile initiatives with ESPN.

For instance, only an Airtel subscriber could participate in the 'Gyarah Hindustani' contest, the winners of which would be sent to Germany to watch the matches live.

The associate sponsors of the sports broadcaster include Indian Oil Corporation, Adidas, Maruti, Motorola, Onida and HDFC. These sponsors are entitled to 128 ad slots each throughout the tournament.

"It is good time for advertisers as there is a certain amount of euphoria even though it doesn't deliver those kind of eyeballs as cricket. Prime time viewing will also help costing in India," said Sundar Raman, general manager, MindShare.

He added that while the ad inventory for cricket was higher than a soccer match, the sheer number of matches in a Fifa tournament made up for its characteristic lack of divisibility.

ESPN STAR Sports has an agreement to share the feed of the two semi-finals and the final with the public broadcaster, Prasar Bharati, on a revenue sharing basis of 75:25.

Quizzed about a possible decline in ad revenue on account of this, Venkateish said, "The revenue loss will be insignificant as it is just three matches out of 64. Moreover, there will be no impact on distribution revenue in a month-long sporting extravaganza such as Fifa World Cup. Distribution revenue is dependent on exclusivity and it is this segment that broadcasters protect."

Distribution revenue is what broadcasters of pay channels get from cable networks for the right to beam the bouquet. Some of these pay channel bouquets are ESPN STAR Sports, Zee, Star and Sony.