As per ICC, more than a fifth of human population or approximately 1 billion people will watch the biggest cricketing event: World Cup 2015. Overall, advertisers are expected to spend between Rs 1200 and Rs 1500 crore on advertisements, which is excluding stadium ads and merchandising rights sold by ICC.
Along with the Indian Premier League (IPL) which is a 20 over format cricketing tournament to be held in April, just after the World Cup, advertisers will spend total of Rs 2200- 2500 crore.
However, the numbers till now only ‘match’ the advertisement spent done in the last world cup in 2011. The reason being that during 2011, all the matches were played in the Indian sub-continent, and the timing were precisely calibrated to match prime time TV viewership. Moreover, the sentiments in India just before the world cup started in Australia were down, owning to the disastrous performance from Indian team during the Australian series.
But after the wins against Pakistan and South Africa, the ad prices are going up, and by the time semi-finals start, it is expected to match Rs 30-35 lakh of previous World Cup’s India-Pakistan semi-final match. The normal TV ad rates for this world cup is going between Rs 4.5-6 lakh for 10 seconds.
The India Pakistan match which happened in Adelaide on February 15th, has already been hailed as the most watched cricket match ever, as more than billion viewers watched the match, compared to 988 million viewers who watched the India Pakistan semi-finals in last World Cup. According to The Hindu, the overall Indian advertisement market will witness a growth of 10% in 2015, solely due to the Cricket World Cup!
Contents
New Aspects of Advertisements
There are mainly two new aspects which are determining the way advertisers are engaging with this year’s World Cup:
Digital Medium
During the last year’s IPL-2014, viewership on digital medium (Internet and Mobile) increased to 35 million, including 10 million during the first 10 matches. Overall, 101 million of live video minutes were consumed by 40 million+ Internet and Mobile based cricketing fans.
Advertisers are counting on these facts while formulating their budget plan for the World Cup, as the viewership on Internet is definitely going to increase. In 2011, there were 120 million Internet users, which has now nearly doubled to 213 million. Star Sports is already streaming all matches on their website, mobile app and as WAP on mobiles and tablets.
Regional Advertisements:
Apart from English and Hindi, this World Cup is being broadcasted in 4 regional languages: Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Bengali, and this fact is bringing in entirely new aspect of advertisements. As per Star Sports, which are the official broadcasters of World Cup, there are several new regional advertisers such as TI Cycles and Mannapuram who are targeting only regional feeds.
What Are Advertisers Upto?
There are lots of new advertisers in this world cup, such as PayTm, a mobile ecommerce company, which have bought the Super 4s property: whenever a boundary is scored, their logo appears on the side screen and on TV. Other ecommerce brands such as Yepme, Snapdeal, Flipkart, Amazon among others are already spending aggressively on TV ads.
Existing advertisers such as Lay’s have initiated a special campaign just before the World Cup started, aimed at their new product. PepsiCo, which owns Lay’s is already the official snacks partner of World Cup.
Panasonic India has said that they have increased their overall advertisement spent by 15-20%, due to the cricket world cup. It is estimated that close to 1400 Indian advertisers will be spending money on TV, Radio and Digital Medium this world cup.
Hyundai, which is an aggressive advertiser, started their ‘Fans of Brilliance’ campaign, wherein they toured India with the World Cup trophy. Travel companies such as Yatra and others have initiated special holiday packages for Australia and New Zealand. As per rough estimates, around 6000-10000 Indian tourists are expected to travel to Australia-New Zealand due to the World Cup. Here are the official point of views of major advertisers of this year’s World Cup.
Here is a list of all official commercial partners of this World Cup.
2011 World Cup garnered total business of Rs 5000 crore, including Rs 1500 crore from Advertisements.
Will 2015 World Cup exceed that amount? We will keep you updated.
[…] despite the odds, Indian cricket fans in India kept on supporting the team, and some of the biggest advertisers in India upped the tempo by creating some really motivational and adrenaline rushing TV […]
[…] or approximately 1 billion people will watch the biggest cricketing event: World Cup 2015. Overall, advertisers are expected to spend between Rs 1200 and Rs 1500 crore on advertisements, which is excluding stadium ads and merchandising rights sold by […]
Great article.. I dont think that 2015 world cup will exceed 2011 advertising amount.. India has a different market and investors thats why we had seen that 2011 world cup had an advertising amount of Rs. 5000 cr… Aussie won’t be coming anywhere near to this amount for sure..