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The bitter imbroglio around the Indian Premier League is surely a schadenfreude for a host of big media companies and media buyers who had viewed the runaway success of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) or the BCCI-led domestic cricket league with, yes, awe, but equally as a threat to their hegemony in the Rs 23,600-crore Indian ad market. It is of little wonder that a host of them are going overboard in their reporting of the muck around IPLfrom the highly politicised exit of Shashi Tharoor from the Union Cabinet to the unending troubles of the league's commissioner Lalit Modi.
Two year ago, when the now disgraced Modi, had kicked off IPL, many big print media companies tried to underplay the tourney, apprehensive as they were of large parts of advertising spends in the crucial summer months being diverted to IPL, leaving the marketers of a host of consumer products and services with little money to pour either in big newspapers or general entertainment channels (GEC).
As much as over Rs 150-200-crore worth of ad revenue got diverted to IPL from other television genres during IPL. The main losers are Hindi GECs, and the movie channels. According to media agencies, the quantum of on-air advertising revenue has almost doubled to around Rs 750-crore for broadcaster Sony Enterta- inment Television, now Multi Screen Media, since the first IPL in 2008.
"IPL gives us a concentrated audience in one channel, therefore we have been the on-air sponsors of IPL for all three editions. However, Hyundai was always bullish on cricket but IPL made us re-draw our advertising and marketing approach," said Vivek Srivastava, joint MD, Innocean, Hyundai's in-house advertising agency. Unable to either diminish IPL's pull with consumers or advertisers with their tactless act of underplaying it in their newspapers and hit by summer months revenue moving more and more towards IPL, some print media biggies affected a turnaround early on in 2008 itself. According to one media industry professional close to the developments, this large media company was able to garner around Rs 40-50-crore additional revenue due to this smart tactic of riding on the IPL frenzy amongst advertisers.
But given IPL's success in 2008, both the league's organiser and MSM, wisened up, putting paid to any such win-win deals that combine IPL ad time with other media time or space. A public spat between IPL and MSM over broadcast rights just two-months before IPL2 again gave a glimmer of hope to many big media owners and buyers on the IPL system finally keeling over its own weight. But that was not to be.
A broadcaster worked out a couple of official programming around IPL3, but given the passion running on live matches, the programmes have failed to click with viewers. A patch up between MSM and IPL's Modi which made the rights more expensive to the tune of over $60-million every year for MSM, and the need to attract more advertisers, and charge more for ad spots, meant that there was less advertising for GECs and big national newspapers.
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