By SRABANA LAHIRI
At risk of sounding repetitive, the journey of Star India has been a story of rise and rise. Just now, its focus on creating premier non-cricket sports properties, and infrastructure to back them up, has paid off, and its newly launched video-streaming app Hotstar is a hit. Meanwhile, according to BARC data for week 31, Star Plus continues its reign at the top in the General Entertainment Category, with Life OK hovering around No. 3 and No. 4.
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Uday Shankar, CEO of Star India, is a sports lover who dabbled in a lot of sports, but jokes that he was so bad at all of them that he “decided to become a journalist”. Through his journey from journalist to CEO, his personal favourite remains cricket, though all his energies nowadays are focused on growing the non-cricket sports market. It was in November 2013 that Shankar announced the company’s serious interest in the sports genre, pledging an investment of Rs 20,000 crore in sports over the next five years.
Almost two years later, Shankar’s big bet on sports seems to have paid off, with the “breakout sports development in the next 3-5 years. He describes Star India’s endeavour to make Season 2 of PKL bigger and better, with –a leap in production techniques, on air graphics and analytics to take the viewer closer to the game.
Season 2 of PKL is being broadcast in five languages- Kannada, Telugu and Marathi along with English and Hindi - across eight channels and on the OTT platform Hotstar. It is also being broadcast to a global audience in over 100 countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Middle East and Latin America.
In fact, the performance has been so good this year that there is a lot of sponsorship and commercial interest. But Shankar is clear that he doesn’t want to dilute the identity of the game, and retain kabaddi as a Star Sports initiative. “That’s why we chose not to sell the title sponsorship,” Shankar says. “We are open to selling the title sponsorship next year, but only if the party is ‘committed to the future of kabaddi’.”
While Season 1 of the Pro Kabaddi League was about re-discovering the game, Season 2 has seen a deepening of engagement and appreciation for the sport and its heroes. “I’d like to thank our partners International Kabaddi Federation (IKF), Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India (AKFI), Mashal Sports and our sponsors for their tireless commitment towards realizing this great vision,” says Shankar.
Star has launched a marketing blitz for the League with the #LePanga campaign with Amitabh Bachchan among others rendering the rap theme song.
CALL FOR CULTURAL CHANGE
Shankar rues the fact that people talk about the absence of a sporting culture, but few are willing to do anything about it. “Corporates are not willing to put in a few crores into sports, even though it would be a fraction of their entertainment budget. Even concerned citizens are not willing to go out and play or watch a sport being played,” he says.
Another thing that bothers him is the dearth of infrastructure in sports other than cricket. “Neither the Government nor municipal authorities or businessmen building facilities and huge townships consider it essential to invest in integrated sports infrastructure. That is a huge challenge for ordinary people to play, for professional players to practise kabaddi or football, etc. Cultural changes are required if India has to develop a sporting culture,” Shankar states.
DRIVING THE SOCIAL IMPACT
At Star, all media content is aimed towards creating a positive social impact, asserts Shankar: “Pushing social thinking, challenging existing norms and beliefs… that’s what we’re doing here, be it content for the GECs or sports. As for kabaddi, we feel immensely proud of what we’ve done in such a short period of time. It’s still early days, but for us it’s a very important thing. Sports in itself is very democratizing and liberating. Our dream is that in the next 5-10 years, we should be able to create 30,000-50,000 kabaddi players across the country who can aspire to make a living out of the game. If we do that, it will have a transformational impact on the lives of people. It can be an important economic tool and also an amazing social glue.”
Season 2 of PKL has also aligned itself with social consciousness through its commitment to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, urging in-stadia audiences, franchise clubs, kabaddi players as well as viewers on TV to participate in keeping their surroundings clean.
At another level, Shankar cites the example of soccer, which has played a hugely positive role in Latin America and Africa, and athletics and some other sports bringing about change in the West Indies, and hopes that sports like kabaddi will do the same thing for India.
Meanwhile, the India Sports Sponsorship Report 2015, GroupM and SportzPower has found that on-ground and team sponsorship for cricket has fallen due to the birth of new sports leagues. The study forecasts that non-cricket sports are likely to expand the sports business and states that Pro Kabaddi League is the one to watch out for.
Feedback: srabana@exchange4media.com
