Indiantelevision.com Team

(27 September 2007 4:00 pm)

BANGALORE: The Twenty20 world cup win by the Indian cricket team has brought back advertisers to sports (cricket) television and how!

Neo Sports Broadcast Private Ltd (NSBPL) which will be telecasting the India-Australia seven match one day series and the one off Twenty20 match as well as the eight match India-Pakistan series has already confirmed 25 sponsors and advertisers who will spend around Rs 750 million for the India-Australia series alone.

NSBPL has signed on major players such as Intel, Pidilite, LG and S Kumars. Players from the mobile and telecom services have yet to sign on. NSBPL CEO Sashi Kalathil expects to rope in about 10 more advertisers who will bring in an additional Rs 250 million while speaking with Indiantelevision.com. By the end of the series, Kalathil expects ad revenues in excess of Rs 1.2 billion from advertisements.

Neo Sports will beam its coverage in English and Neo Sports plus will offer its viewers multiple language feeds in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Kalathil says that NSBPL plans to add other regional languages too for matches later on, once the distribution work is complete.

Currently with the agreements that NSBPL has signed on, the signals will be beamed to around 38% of the cable homes in India. However since the feed will also be available on DD, a major chunk of the Indian television homes will be able to watch the cricket series.

In Karnataka the channel has signed on two big MSO's – Amogh and Incable. Nationally, the channel expects to rope in Hathway soon. Tamil Nadu is where the channel has faced very limited success in distribution with a major chunk of the cable operations being controlled by the Sumangali network.

NSBPL has not yet started marketing the India-Pakistan series, and if things go well for India in the India-Australia series, Kalathil is confident of revenues of over Rs 2 billion from the Indo-Pak outing.

To capture the eyeballs of the office goers, NSBPL announced the launch of its video on demand and live streaming service on pay per view basis on www.neosports.tv starting with the first one dayer in Bangalore. Kalathil informs that the seven or eight companies he has spoken with have show keenness of availing the service for their employees.

According to NSBPL data, around 22 million computers in India are connected to the internet and Kalathil expects to garner around Rs 50 million from this source for both the series. This includes a rate of Rs 5/- on pay per view and advertisement revenues for both the series. According to Kalathil, NSBPL has spent around Rs 20 million for setting up the website and infrastructure.