Star Sports, Star India who recently purchased the IPL broadcasting rights for world feed through television and digital platforms have started selling the inventory of advertising already for the eleventh edition of the Indian premier league in 2018.
Star is under pressure to sell at least the amount of inventory in its first year after winning global media rights of IPL at a whopping Rs 16,437.5 crore for five years to stay in line for profits on their investments. Star India has brought about to sign 11 sponsors, despite a hike in the advertising rates over last year.
Market sources say almost Rs 500 crore worth of ad inventory has been sold as of Wednesday for IPL 11.
When asked, Anil Jayaraj, EVP, and head of ad sales for Star Sports, was quoted that the response from advertisers has been “superb” and has exceeded expectations, “We have signed 11 brands already and given the overwhelming demand, we are hopeful of signing more big brands in the coming weeks,” he said.
A number of brands who have sought on to the IPL opportunity are Vivo, Coca-Cola, Polycab, Parle, Kent, Elica, and Dream11.
Market sources say the Star India’s rates for ad sales for television and digital were coming up to Rs 9-10 lakh per 10 seconds with effect.
During the last 10 years, the Sony Pictures Network who had the broadcasting sold their inventory for every 10 seconds ad slots at about 6 lakh.
Star India, which had only digital rights of IPL until last year, had booked Rs 140 crore from ad sales from the league.
“This year, we approached selling in a very different way as this was the first time we have both TV and digital rights. We were able to offer clients a mass reach of TV and a very sharp targeted reach of digital on Hotstar. Along with multiple languages, the packages we are offering are very lucrative for the advertisers,” Jayaraj said.
Star India has many multi-language sports channels as well as hotstar their digital medium for broadcasting to provide feed to as large an audience as possible and would want to cash in on that.
Other than the IPL the media experts feel that there is no other property which gives consistent ratings over a six-week period, thus the advertisers’ interest is absolutely usual. In highly wished for categories enterprises couldn’t take chances of not being seen on the platform. Star Sports though doesn”t mind it at all.
