The Chief Executive Officer of the cash-rich Indian Premier League Sundar Raman today said having television commentary in regional language will help grow cricket in the country.
"To me, we take India as one large mass of audience. Cricket today is experimenting and there is a big opportunity. If you look at regional channels they are doing reasonably well and turning out numbers. There is no reason why you can't hear a sports commentary in Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil or Marathi. To me, that is another opportunity to exploit," he said at the FICCI Frames event.
Raman stressed on the importance of marketing and said, "Every sport needs to market itself well. We are a one-sport country and that is possibly because the one sport marketed itself well.
"I was delighted to see the Hockey League coming on television. If you look at numbers the opportunity for cricket is still large. The commentator needs to reach out to a man who doesn't understand cricket and it can't be a commentator talking to another commentator. You have to help grow the audience," he said.
Raman said that dependence on advertising could lead to tinkering of formats which will impact the sport adversely.
"Cricket is an advertiser-friendly sport. Imagine if the football federation announces a commercial game after 15 minutes, the economy of football may double but it slows the game down.
"It doesn't allow a market like India which is largely driven by advertising to help grow the sport because there is no advertising in football except the break in between the halves. My fear is that it should not lead to tinkering of the format which is not in the interest of the game," he said.
