MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Sports Network (SPSN), official broadcaster of the India tour of West Indies which kickstarted Saturday, has reportedly got on board Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi and Idea/Vodafone as co-presenting sponsors.
Livemint reports that eight associate sponsors including Bajaj Auto, Naukri.com, Ultratech, Pernod Ricard, Amazon.in, Byju’s, Pharmeasy, My Team X1.com and Shikhar pan masala have been onboarded. While Kent is extraaa innings sponsor, spot buys on live matches will be done by Apple, Netflix, Mankind Pharma, Bharat Matrimony and My circle 11.com among others, according to the financial daily.
“The advertise response has been really good as the entire Indian team will be playing on this tour coming on the back of recently concluded ICC World Cup,” Rohit Gupta, chief revenue officer (ad sales and international business) at Sony Pictures Networks India, told Livemint. “Since the ticket size of this tournament is much smaller it is a good buy on TV. We have a huge Indian community we expect to attend the matches which will be held in Florida.”
“The momentum on advertising is still alive with brands continue to come on board. This is good opportunity for us to increase our subscription numbers especially the larger screen users. We will be running regional commentary in Tamil and Telugu for the first time to the overall language mix. This could be our biggest cricketing series,” Uday Sodhi, business head of SPN’s OTT platform SonyLIV further told the financial daily.
One advantage that the network has going for it is that the the entire India team is playing. While there is no official word on the matter, SportzPower remains convinced that the principal reason for this happy situation (for SPSN), is India’s having got knocked out at the semi-final stage at the recently concluded ICC World Cup. For if India had performed to preordained script, Team India captain Virat Kohli would have availed of a well earned break.
So why did he not take that break? He was protecting his turf. For there had been much talk in the aftermath of India’s “early” World Cup exit of splitting the Test and limited overs captaincy between him and Rohit Sharma. IF the Mumbai Indians captain had performed well (again as preordained), that talk would have only got louder. And that was something that Kohli was not having. Or so SportzPower strongly believes.
