It was around January that the team at ESPN Software India, led by managing director RC Venkateish, decided to evolve a game plan encompassing marketing, promotion and programming for the biggest spectacle in the world aka the soccer World Cup.

Somewhere in the subconscious was also the fact that the Fifa event needed to be put up on a scale in India that would neutralise the lack of Indian cricket (considered the biggest sporting draw in the India sub-continent) on ESPN and Star Sports, which are managed in Asia by a joint venture company ESPN Star Sports.

ESPN Software India MD RC Venkateish

A successfully implemented soccer strategy would not only get in distribution gains, but would also partially offset (notional) revenue losses for lack of Indian cricket for which ESS has made a lunge twice without success till now.

Considering ESPN's parent Disney, according to international media reports, had forked out a whopping $100 million for the English-language rights to broadcast the World Cup across ABC and ESPN, it was worth giving their all, Team Venky probably must have thought.

From here germinated the idea to have an integrated marketing, programming and promotional strategy for the Fifa show that culminated almost four months later into Duniya Goal Hai (loosely meaning the world would be watching soccer) --- the punch line for ESS' football campaign that is now being ramped up big time as D-Day for the opening event of the globe's biggest sporting spectacle draws ever nearer. Of course, there were dollops of creative inputs from JWT, the agency for ESS in India.

"Soccer is getting much bigger in India than it was in 2002, the last World Cup (that was shown on Ten Sports in India). Over 55 million people have watched the European League this season," a bullish Venkateish says.

After all, the matches of the Fifa World Cup, holding centre stage from 9 June to 9 July, have convenient timings with some starting at 6:30 pm IST just ahead of prime time viewing and when people would be trooping back from office.

About 75 million Indians sampled the telecast of World Cup 2002 on Ten Sports and DD with a cumulative audience reach of 30.2 million in India. For the last World Cup, which marked the debut of Ten Sports in India, despite its limited spread in terms of distribution, the channel had ratings of over 50 per cent in places like Kolkata for the final.

On the other hand, ESPN, which aired an India-Sri Lanka cricket ODI on the day the final match of 2002 WC was played, could muster ratings of just 14-15 per cent.

The Euro 2004 continued the growth and had a cumulative audience reach of 32.3 million viewers in. This interest in soccer in India now touches even EPL that had a reach of 42.8 million for the season till date, according to ESPN.

"This means that nearly one in every two individuals in cable homes across India has sampled the EPL," Venkateish points out, adding that ESS hopes to further heighten this popularity through Fifa World Cup matches and other related programming.

No wonder, concurring with Venkateish is ESPN India's vice-president (sales and marketing) and distribution head Sricharan Iyengar, "For us the Fifa is the biggest event that any channel could have this year. It's bigger than Indian cricket also."

What has made it challenging for ESS is that Indians don't have any direct stake in the World Cup as India is still far far away from playing in the soccer fiesta. Any strategy for India would have to keep this in mind so as to make available the matches in such a manner that it involves Indians and entertains them too.

Says ESPN India associate director marketing Paras Sharma, "As sports broadcast leaders, the challenge was to present the World Cup to Indians in a different way. The marketing strategy has been built up keeping that in mind."