Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, Jan 12, 2006
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 |
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Marketing
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Promotions & Offers Variety - Sports Sponsors find a match in Chennai Open Abhinav Ramnarayan
Ivan Ljubicic (right), winner of this year's Chennai Open, with Carlos Moya. - R. Ragu
Chennai , Jan. 11 WITH the tickets for the last two days of the Chennai Open 2006 being sold out (the stadium has a capacity of 5,800), the clutch of sponsors, who along with the Tamil Nadu Government stepped in to fund the tournament last year, probably got their money's worth. Having stepped up their spends and promotional activities, the results were there to see, as tickets to the penultimate day were sold out almost two weeks in advance, a fact the organisers advertised in the local papers. "In terms of exposure, the Chennai Open has never had it so good," said Mr Ravi Krishnan, Managing Director, IMG-TWI South Asia. "We had so many off-court activities," he said, citing the Ashish Soni's New York Fashion Week collection, which was showcased at the tournament to raise money for the Chief Minister's Public Relief Fund. "We managed to raise close to Rs 2.7 lakh, along with Rafael Nadal's contribution," he said. The tournament was aired live on Star Sports across India and South-East Asia through Star Sports (40 hours of coverage) and across 40 countries in Europe through Euro Sport 2. Saint Gobain, one of the Gold sponsors (which spent Rs 50 lakh each), took full advantage of this airtime. It was the only company from the consortium to take up television sponsorship, according to Mr B. Santhanam, Managing Director, Saint Gobain. He said the company took ten spots on each playing day, which gave it tremendous mileage. The company set up mirrors at each of the eight entrances in the stadium; the front façade at the ticketing counter was redone with Saint Gobain glass. "It was a good project in terms of increasing brand awareness, especially the last three days, when more people came in," he said. The TVS group replaced last year's sponsor Sundaram Finance with MyTVS. Mr R. Srinivasan, President, MyTVS, said being associated with such a high profile tournament gave the company excellent exposure. He said the TVS group has a five-year arrangement with the tournament. L&T, despite not being involved in brand promotion, used the tournament to project the company's initiatives, according to Mr V.S. Ramana, Head, Corporate Communications. "Keeping this in mind, we tied up with organisers for an `L&T Quiz' during the first five days, covering L&T's general and sports-related initiatives in India, and offered token prizes to three winners every day," he said. The Platinum sponsors, such as Indian Bank, which invested Rs 1 crore in the tournament, helped the State Government retain the tournament in the city.
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