IndianMascot
Core Member
After building a highly successful and profitable entertainment franchise, Rupert Murdoch’s Star India has now set its eyes on the sports broadcast business. The company recently rebranded its sports network by retiring ESPN and Star Cricket and making Star Sports as the mother brand.
The 21st Century Fox-owned company is putting serious money into the sports broadcast business. The huge investment in sports is backed by a carefully crafted long-term strategy that hinges on going regional, the 24×7 Hindi sports channel being the first step in that direction, and building non-cricket sports that have viewership potential. Star Sports is looking at having language channels in Tamil, Bengali, Marathi and Kannada.
Star Sports India, the sports broadcast subsidiary of Star India, has identified cricket, soccer, hockey, and badminton as sports verticals that can be scaled up. It is building soccer, hockey and badminton through local franchise-based leagues. In soccer, it has gone a step ahead and floated a joint venture with IMG Reliance.
In an exclusive tete a tete with TelevisionPost’s Ashwin Pinto, Star India COO Sanjay Gupta talks about the company’s sports strategy and the challenges surrounding it.
Edited excerpts:
Star India has made heavy investments into the sports business. What kind of revenues are you looking at? The sports business currently contributes 20 per cent to Star India’s turnover.
We expect the sports business to grow faster than the overall media business in the country. It should grow by 25-30 per cent year-on-year. We expect growth coming from both subscription and advertising. On the subscription front, direct-to-home (DTH) penetration is growing and this is a transparent system. Digital cable revenues will grow in the coming six months.
On the advertising front, FMCG companies reported good results in the recently concluded quarter. This suggests that things will be better going forward after what has been a difficult year with the economic slowdown. Having said that, things are still in a fluid state. This is why I would not like to comment at this stage on the ad revenue growth expected at Star.
Wish to read further, --------------->
The 21st Century Fox-owned company is putting serious money into the sports broadcast business. The huge investment in sports is backed by a carefully crafted long-term strategy that hinges on going regional, the 24×7 Hindi sports channel being the first step in that direction, and building non-cricket sports that have viewership potential. Star Sports is looking at having language channels in Tamil, Bengali, Marathi and Kannada.
Star Sports India, the sports broadcast subsidiary of Star India, has identified cricket, soccer, hockey, and badminton as sports verticals that can be scaled up. It is building soccer, hockey and badminton through local franchise-based leagues. In soccer, it has gone a step ahead and floated a joint venture with IMG Reliance.
In an exclusive tete a tete with TelevisionPost’s Ashwin Pinto, Star India COO Sanjay Gupta talks about the company’s sports strategy and the challenges surrounding it.
Edited excerpts:
Star India has made heavy investments into the sports business. What kind of revenues are you looking at? The sports business currently contributes 20 per cent to Star India’s turnover.
We expect the sports business to grow faster than the overall media business in the country. It should grow by 25-30 per cent year-on-year. We expect growth coming from both subscription and advertising. On the subscription front, direct-to-home (DTH) penetration is growing and this is a transparent system. Digital cable revenues will grow in the coming six months.
On the advertising front, FMCG companies reported good results in the recently concluded quarter. This suggests that things will be better going forward after what has been a difficult year with the economic slowdown. Having said that, things are still in a fluid state. This is why I would not like to comment at this stage on the ad revenue growth expected at Star.
Wish to read further, --------------->
