MUMBAI: The fallout from global industry data major Nielsen’s announcement earlier this week of plans to “exit several smaller, underperforming markets and non-core businesses” has had an immediate negative impact in the Asia Pacific region with the closure of the India and Singapore offices of Nielsen Sports.
In a related development, the South Africa office of Nielsen Sports has also got the chop.
While the India business will now be handled out of Dubai, the Singapore business will be managed from Japan.
The closures are also a consequence of Nielsen announcing plans to lay off 3,500 staff globally (about 8% of its 46,000 workforce) in the second half of 2020.
Marco Nazzari, managing director, International at Nielsen Sports, told SportBusiness the move was being made “to position the company for greater profitability and growth”, and was part of “broad-based measures to drive operational efficiencies and optimise our global footprint”.
He added: “Asia remains an important market for Nielsen Sports. While Nielsen is maintaining a presence in Singapore, we’re centralising our Nielsen Sports presence for (South East) Asia in Japan to leverage deep industry knowledge and expertise across the region while effectively keeping pace with client needs.”
Besides Japan, Nielsen Sports’ other offices in Asia-Pacific are now in Dubai and Australia.
