Mumbai: The sports genre today attracts many brands. For the past two years, we've seen start-ups, fin-tech, edu-tech, and new-age brands widely advertised on sports properties, be they TV or digital.
Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, Dentsu Creative India president North Ajit Devraj noted that advertisers targeting varied consumer segments based on age, gender, and other demographics have seen brand conversations and search interests spike during sporting events. Online businesses or digital-first brands have been able to grow key metrics like share of downloads, traffic on apps, etc. by advertising on sports properties.
Dentsu Creative, pronounced Cannes Lions Agency of the Year 2022, is Dentsu Aegis Network’s (DAN) global creative agency that transforms brands and businesses through the power of "modern creativity."
Devraj leads the entire business for one of DAN's largest accounts in the Indian automotive sector. This cuts across domains of brand, channel, and sub-brand strategy, creative and media strategy, campaign development, rural marketing, digital marketing, and performance marketing, and also delivers data-driven marketing projects such as hyperlocal marketing, CRM, salesforce, advocacy, and loyalty programmes.
Devraj stated, "High user engagement of sports properties translates into the realisation of the advertiser's business potential and performance, and ultimately trust in the brand. While sports has traditionally been the domain of large blue-chip brands, advertising in this genre has become much more democratised, with a slew of start-ups and new age brands jumping on board."
He added that while start-ups are seeing a funding slowdown, he noted that the total spend is unlikely to be massively impacted. "However, most start-ups are likely to shift their spending toward performance marketing rather than pure brand building. So there will be some impact on these high-profile sports properties and events. This also presents legacy brands with an opportunity to increase their presence and visibility on these platforms. Hence, the impact is likely to be minimal."
He goes on to add that OTT is becoming a critical add-on for advertisers as a lot of audiences have become cord-cutters and have moved completely to the connected TV ecosystem. Hence, OTTs bring in a big, exclusive base of audiences that provides incremental reach to advertisers. At present, there are an estimated 0.5 million cord cutters in India; however, reports estimate 13 million HH will be cutting the cord by 2026. The digital revenue for sports is estimated to grow from Rs 1,540 crore in FY21 to Rs 4,360 crore in FY26, at a CAGR of 22 per cent.
He further pointed out that subscription revenues for sports are expected to grow on the back of an increase in OTT subscriptions and a visible, concerted effort by OTT platforms to move towards a SVoD future.
"Despite the rapid growth of digital consumption in recent years, the TV sports market is expected to be more than twice the size of the overall digital sports market in the medium to long term, and TV as a platform for sports consumption and monetisation is likely to remain highly relevant for the foreseeable future," he said.
Given that the bulk of the sports genre in India still revolves around cricket, the return on investment on cricket-oriented properties will be substantially higher. "A new report by investment bank JM Financial indicates that the media rights value of the IPL has compounded at an impressive annual rate of 18 per cent in the 15 years since the league began. This estimate is based on the latest valuation ($6.2 billion) of IPL’s media rights for the period of 2023–2027. However, the growth of professional sports leagues has been slow thus far, except for the IPL (which is the leader by far), the ISL, and the Pro Kabaddi League, which have seen some impetus with the ISL integrating into the existing football system to become India's top football league. Similarly, the Pro Kabaddi League offers potential as well."
On the viewership front, he noted that cricket continues to dominate sports viewership and reach in India, with the IPL season being the most watched sports property on TV. This is a property that most brands plan for months in advance and look forward to utilising to further their brand objectives. "If we look at the overall volume of live cricket content telecast in India, it stands at a staggering 16,217 hours (till week 44 of 2022), up from 15,506 hours in 2021. No other sport comes close in terms of content volume and reach. Having said that, the viewership of other non-cricket sports has been steadily growing and stands at a reasonable 20 per cent in 2022."
He goes on to note that the TV viewership of Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) has been rising over the years with a viewership of 328 million viewers in 2019 as compared to 312 million in 2017 growing at 2.5 per cent CAGR and a TVR/match of 1.158.
The TV viewership of Indian Super League (ISL) reached 167 million viewers in 2019 and 158 million in 2017 with a CAGR of 2.8 per cent while the 2021 season surpassed the previous season in terms of television ratings, time spent viewing, brand integrations, and social buzz.
