MUMBAI: Disney Star, host broadcaster for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup , has roped in 26 sponsors and 500 advertisers ahead of the tournament’s kick-off Thursday.
The sponsors include Coca-Cola, PhonePay, Mahindra & Mahindra, Dream11, HUL, Havells, IndusInd Bank, Pernod India, Booking.com, Peter England, Kingfisher Packaged Drinking Water, Mondelez, Emirates, Diageo, Jindal Panther, MRF Tyres, LendingKart, BPCL, Herbalife, Haier, AMFI, Google Pay, Polycab, Amul, VIDA and Amazon.
Several of these sponsors have opted for both TV and digital formats and some of them are sponsors only on TV or for digital, Disney Star head of Sports Sanjog Gupta told PTI. All categories have shown deep interest in associating with the World Cup on Star, Gupta said.
“There has been an immense demand which is also buoyed by the festive season, when typically ad spends tend to be at their highest levels,” he added. Several companies such as Coca-Cola, PhonePay, HUL have presence across linear and digital platforms.
Disney Star is broadcasting all 48 matches of the World Cup live on its TV channels and streaming it through its OTT platform Disney+ Hotstar. The company has custom-built packages for advertisers, which will serve their brand objectives. It is also giving a “big push” on the digital side this year, which allows advertisers to connect with specific audience cohorts.
“The festive period, the World Cup in India and the anticipation and confidence around the Indian team has combined along with Disney plus Hotstar and Star Sports’ strong brand association to create a proposition for advertisers, which is unmissable,” Gupta further told the newswire.
“Our own plans and our ambition is around making this the biggest World Cup both in terms of all the content and programming that we are doing around the World Cup, as well as the experience that we are looking to offer. We have a long lead-up to this World Cup. Star will broadcast and livestream through Disney+ Hotstar in nine languages and has lined up a pool of 100 commentators working across various feeds on the World Cup.
“We are producing the live experience of the World Cup in nine languages. These happen to be — Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bangla, Marathi and Gujarati,” he told PTI. On the linear screen, a viewer will have the option of using a button on his remote to switch between languages.
