Biggest Indian contingent fails to light up advertisers’ Olympic flame

MUMBAI | NEW DELHI:Broadcaster Star India’s mega coverage plan for the Olympics Games, scheduled to kick-off in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on August 5, has got a lukewarm response from advertisers in the year the country has sent its biggest ever contingent to the prestigious quadrennial tournament.
As of now, the broadcaster has signed five sponsors — Amazon, Bajaj Electricals, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and Amul. The television broadcaster has already announced the biggest ever coverage plan with the entire sports bouquet — all eight sports channels — showing only the Olympics. Star had also launched a high decibel marketing campaign 50 days prior to the games as part of the build-up.

“There are two reasons for the tepid response. First is the odd timings, and second is the broadcaster’s rigidity with the packages,” a senior media buyer said on condition of anonymity. “Star is not allowing advertisers to select the particular games that one may want to buy ad spots on. Also, the broadcast plan has not been shared, which is a big turn off.”

According to sources, Star India is selling all four platforms separately – Star Sports (8 channels), Hotstar, Doordarshan and DD Sports. While the rates for spot buys on Star Sports channels are at `30,000 per 10 seconds, on DD and DD Sports, the spots are available for `20,000. Sponsorships are available at a higher price. Industry sources also said that after qualification rounds, the matches where Indian athletes qualify for next rounds will get preference in coverage and advertising slots will be sold separately.

Nitin Kukreja, CEO of Star’s sports business, however, claimed the broadcaster offers disproportionate share of voice to sponsors by only bringing in select, few advertisers. “With the unprecedented level of coverage we are providing to the Olympics, sales have progressed extremely well and will set a new benchmark,” he said, while refusing to comment on any specific sponsor deliverables, packages or revenues.

Vanita Keswani, CEO at Madison Media Sigma, said that 4-6 sponsors for Olympics is not bad as the timings are odd and the packages offered are not efficient. In contrast, the Indian Olympic Association saw the best ever response from advertisers, with 9 sponsors committing over `10 crore.