Going the FIFA way
Rohit Gupta, President, Multi Screen Media, talks about making FIFA as huge a success in India as the Indian Premier League, the channel’s focus on sports, a genre which contributes around 30% to the channel’s ad-sales revenues and more... By Priyanka Mehra Sports fans have another reason to rejoice, post the IPL mania: Multi Screen Media (MSM) is all set to roll out the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Here are excerpts from a conversation with Rohit Gupta, President, MSM. Q] In a cricket-crazy nation, do you think we undermine viewership for football? While cricket still drives all the viewership and revenues within that, over the years it is the T-20 format that is increasingly becoming popular. With 65% of the population under 35 years of age, they need fast-paced sports and football has clearly taken the position of the No.2 sport in the country. Last year, the total reach of cricket was 210 million and football’s reach was 155 million, and this was without the World Cup. So now you can see how fast football is growing. We expect FIFA 2014 to cross the 100 million reach and after IPL, it will be the second biggest event on Indian television. Q] How is the marketing campaign ‘Live the Magic’ designed to reach out to smaller cities in an innovative manner? As has been the case with us always, we want to broaden the base of viewers and make it more mass. This time around, we have signed John Abraham who will be part of the wrap-around programming. John is a football enthusiast and is also a youth icon extremely popular among both males and females. He will certainly help us grow the overall viewership share. Q] Xolo Smartphone is the associate sponsor, who are the other sponsors being targeted? We are in the process of closing our deals and we will have all the large key brands associated with FIFA, there is a huge interest and we are in discussions with all key categories, like Mobile, Auto, Handsets, E-commerce, Consumer Durables, etc. You will see a lot of brands present that are common to IPL. As we have all the FIFA rights from 2014 to 2018, we also have the second biggest football tournament, the Euro Cup in 2016. Our proposition to advertisers is to partner with us and be part of the biggest football tournaments for the next four years. All brands are also looking to invest outside cricket and football is a perfect fit. Q] How do you hope to take FIFA to the level of IPL? Given the niche TG (young urban males) how are you hoping to increase viewership? As mentioned, viewership on football is growing at a rapid pace of close to 25% a year. In 2010, the FIFA world reach was at 63 million and the reach of IPL in 2010 was 135 million. Four years back, it was close to 50% of IPL. In the last four years, there has been a tremendous growth in the overall football viewership and by extremely conservative estimates, it should cross the 100 million mark easily this time. If that happens, India will be among the top six countries with the highest viewership share. Q] The channel has been steadily investing in sports properties. What are the reasons for investing in FIFA, given its niche audience in India? FIFA is not a niche property. In fact, it is the biggest viewed property in the world and as per the viewership data here in India, with a reach of 100 million it will be the second most watched event after IPL. Q] Sports as a genre is seeing a steady increase in online viewership; what is the channel doing to monetize this or tap into the digital viewership? Digital is obviously a part of our overall sports and network strategy. Our digital revenues are growing higher than the overall industry revenues, and now form a significant part of the overall revenues. With the new-look revived Sony Liv platform for FIFA, the consumer experience of watching the games would be awesome as a person can choose the various camera angles that he wants to view the game from, apart from all the stats, etc., that will be provided online all the time. Q] How much does sports contribute to the overall revenues of MSM? Close to 30% of our ad-sales revenues come from sports, and that is very big. Feedback: priyanka.mehra@exchange4media.com
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