The Hindu Business Line : World Sport to Net new markets for IPL

Engaging in sampling exercise for the T-20 format to audiences who are more accustomed to the usual five-day test matches, is the job on hand for WSG as it reaches out to new markets.

Purvita Chatterjee

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Mumbai, June 12 For IPL’s next season, the Singapore-based World Sport Group (WSG) is planning to use the Internet as a marketing tool to reach out to new markets such as China, South America and Japan.

Mr Venu Nair, CEO, WSG, told Business Line, “In the smaller markets for cricket the cost of the signal is prohibitive and online marketing is the easiest way to reach out to these markets. We would be using our Web site (IPLT20.com) to tap into new markets such as China, South America and Japan to have audiences sample the IPL format.”

With intentions of reaching out to an additional one million viewers in the new markets, WSG has already begun the process of marketing IPL’s second season.

“We are also looking into tapping the affiliate members of the International Cricket Council in countries such as The Netherlands where the exposure to international cricket is not that high to sample the IPL format,” added Mr Nair.

Other new markets include countries such as Fiji and Papua New Guinea and WSG is currently using Sky’s platform as a test market for viewers to sample the matches.

“It is a challenge to reach new markets where there are not enough broadcast partners,” he said. Engaging in a sampling exercise for the T-20 format to audiences who are more accustomed to the usual five-day test matches, is the job on hand for WSG as it reaches out to new markets.

Hoping to break even in IPL’s next season, WSG, which has bagged the global media rights at $1.026 billion, would be using the Net more extensively to market its branded property.

“We didn’t have time to use the Net and online space adequately during the first season but now we plan to use the Net as a sampling exercise to reach the league matches to a lot more people and break even in our operations in the second season,” said Mr Nair.

Besides, there would be new additions made on the IPL site to build a fan base of viewers to create communities and loyalties for the league matches.

Meanwhile, in certain markets such as China, there is already some amount of piracy happening through the process of ‘sopcasts’, a process which involves peer to peer sharing of content.

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