Ten Cricket aims at Rs 1.4 bn ad revenue from India-South Africa series

Ten Cricket aims at Rs 1.4 bn ad revenue from India-South Africa series

MUMBAI: Ten Cricket is targeting ad revenues in the neighbourhood of Rs 1.4 billion from the upcoming India versus South Africa series that will see 21 days of cricket.

Ten Cricket has signed up five sponsors but is not willing to disclose the names yet. "We are targeting Rs 1.2-1.4 billion. The response from the market has been good. We have signed up five sponsors. We will reveal the names once we have signed up all the sponsors," Zee Entertainment Enterprises chief revenue officer and niche channels head Joy chakraborthy tells Indiantelevision.com.
 
Ten Cricket is looking at lining up 10 sponsors. "Each sponsor will shell out around Rs 110 million. This is a period when clients firm up their marketing budgets. So the timing of the series is good," chakraborthy avers.

Sponsors will take up 70 per cent of the inventory. The Tests, chakraborthy says, are being sold for Rs 75,000 -110,000, the ODIs for Rs 250,000 and the Twenty20 match for Rs 400,000 a spot.
 
When asked about whether the cricket World Cup that follows this event is a threat in terms of being able to get the desired rates, chakraborthy notes that the multi-country format carries an element of risk even with the event taking place in India.

But isn‘t the distribution of the newly launched channel still an issue that could upset the advertising targets? "We have got distribution in place. The No.1 versus No.2 Test teams are playing each other. There is buzz and you can gauge this from the fact that some senior players are travelling to South Africa in advance," chakraborthy says.
 
The India-South Africa series kicks off on 15 December and will feature three Test Matches, five ODIs and one Twenty20 International.

Speaking on the Asian Games that is being telecast on Ten Sports, chakraborthy concedes that it did not receive an enthusiastic response from advertisers. "While we got some clients like Nokia, the fact is that multi-sports events do not fare well," he says.