MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Sports Network (SPSN), the cluster of sports channels under Sony Pictures Network India (SPN), host broadcaster of FIFA World Cup 2018 in the subcontinent, is all set to take viewer engagement levels up notches as the clock counts down to the tournament’s kick-off on June 14.
According to Kedar Teny, senior vice president of Marketing & OAP in Sports, the success of their #MeriDoosriCountry advertising campaign, which recorded as many as 20 million views across social media platforms, has encouraged Sony to extend it into their digital content plans by forming a ‘MeriDoosri Country Zone’ on the broadcaster’s OTT platform Sony Liv.
The aim of this zone is to customize the viewing experience of fans in which firstly, they need to choose their favourite teams (2-3 at the maximum). During live matches, they will get the opportunity to participate in a predictor game, in which they can battle alongside other viewers or even friends by predicting the right scores at certain junctures of the game, which players would score goals and so on. Sony will reward the winners of the day with prizes.
SPN had first introduced the predictor during the UEFA Champions League 2018 Final in May and it was considered to be a welcome innovation.
Additionally, with its ‘Match Centre’, LIV will focus on supplementing telecast with data such as live scores, player positions, team information, match stats and commentary.
Prasana Krishnan, EVP & Business head of Sport at SPN opines that the #MeriDoosriCountry campaign reflected the spirit of football due to its universal appeal and simplicity. He confirms that the FIFA World Cup brings in a set of fans who are not only ‘purists’ of the game who follow it all year and understand its economics, but also those who support certain countries due to several reasons such as their favourite players, history, culture, to prove their family and friends wrong and so on.
The latter are in greater numbers and as a result, Krishnan believes that Sony’s success would lie in striking a balance when it comes to analysing the game.
To do that more effectively, Krishnan confirmed that the company will be deploying an anchor in Russia specially to cover segments outside live matches such as reactions in fan parks, covering aspects of Russian culture and heritage, football memorabilia and so on. For more content on broadcast and digital platforms, Sony has the advantage of leveraging their partnership with ESPN, one of the global broadcasters of the event.
For the first time, SPN will also be having a studio dedicated for Hindi programming, which would feature commentary and analysis of the matches. Sony also announced on Friday the addition of Tamil and Telugu live feeds as a part of expanding their regional outreach of the tournament.
Earlier, it had been decided that English, Hindi, Bengali and Malayalam will be the four languages in which the tournament would be broadcast in.
The company took much pride in their success with specialized Bengali commentary during World Cup 2014 in Brazil. Teny believes that this played a massive role in Sony seeing a then-record 100 million viewers tuned in for the tournament as per TAM figures. This time, the company is aiming to cross the 200 million mark.
ALongside doubling in viewership, SPN is targeting a Rs 2 billion payoff from ad-sales and on-air sponsorship, a jump of over 50% from the 2014 edition of the planet’s most watched sporting event.
Krishnan acknowledged that there will be an expansion of plans for regional broadcasting in future events as well, seeing its potential just as was witnessed in IPL 2018. When it comes to competition and market share taking Star India into account, he said that SPN prefers to follow the convergent model of programming more for what he terms ‘platform agnostic viewing’. He believes that football being a fast-paced sport in essence doesn’t need much intrusiveness. Whether it is television or digital, Sony expects to come out a winner as it is.
So while broadcast might churn in great numbers and response, LIV will be playing a great supporting role for the company in making fans not only tune in to the action at the time and place of their choice, but also draw from them individual and collective responses to the action on the field in real time for a holistic viewing experience.
Speaking of real time, while live matches will be behind a pay-wall, non-paying subscribers can access ad-supported telecast with a 5-minute delay.
For the record, LIV will also offer matches on partner platforms such as Xiaomi’s MI Phones and MI TV, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, CTV and JIO feature phones.
