The Hindu Business Line : A games show

Sports channels are beginning to emerge from the shadows of the ever-popular genre of general entertainment. Besides, sports other than cricket are steadily rising in popularity.

TENNIS, Formula 1, hockey, soccer. Live, in your living rooms. With respectable, if not spectacular, TRPs. Sounds far-fetched?

Not quite. Recent television viewership trends across the country indicate that channels dedicated to sports are giving other niche categories such as news, cartoons and green channels a spirited fight.

Observes Atul Phadnis, Director (S Group), TAM Media Research: "Non-cricket viewership has been going up steadily across the years, which is good news for sports channels. Also, it would have been much more had it not been for the cricket World Cup this year."

According to Himanshu Verma, Associate Director (Corporate Communications), ESPN Star Sports, "Sports channels have consistently been the second most watched genre after mass entertainment. On an all-India level, Hindi entertainment channels have a share of 21 per cent as against six per cent for sports and three per cent for news."

While adding that the share of sports channels obviously rises to the level of mass entertainment during months of Indian cricket, Verma says even during months when India doesn't play cricket, the share of sports channels remains at par with news channels, and is higher than music and English entertainment channels.

Rajat Jain, Executive Vice-President and Business Head at Sony Entertainment Television (SET) MAX, the `movies and events' channel, points out that in general, advertisers from across industries are now coming aboard sports channels. "Categories such as insurance, consumer durables, automobiles, male grooming, fast moving consumer goods, and even telecom are advertising on sports channels, more so during cricketing action," says Jain.

However, the fact remains that, on an average, sports channels account for about four-five per cent of the overall ad pie. The lion's share, of course, remains with general entertainment.

While agreeing that Hindi mass entertainment garners the highest viewership, Sharmista Rijhwani, Managing Director, Taj Television India Pvt Ltd (or Ten Sports), observes that Ten Sports has "rewritten viewership rules" in India. "In terms of overall viewing of cable and satellite (C&S) channels, Hindi mass entertainment channels garner the highest daily viewing in specific day parts, whereas sports channels would get levels similar to mass entertainment only during live cricketing events featuring India. In terms of news channels and English entertainment/movie channels as a genre, it has come to the fore only in the last few years, with consistent viewership everyday, which spiked occasionally in case of a mega movie/ serial (entertainment channels) and sensational breaking news (news channels)."

However, she adds that Ten Sports, with its programming strategy, has been consistently outperforming all news channels and English entertainment/movie channels, week on week. The channel has been able to move into the same league as mass entertainment channels, which was traditionally possible only with Live India cricket, according to Rijhwani.

According to Chris McDonald, Chief Executive Officer, Taj Television Ltd, Ten Sports is "generating significant revenues and is on track to break even by year-end".

Cricket, of course, is the icing on the cake. Sports channels obviously make a killing during cricketing action. And when tournaments involve one-day cricket and India, the sky is the limit — both in terms of gathering TRPs and generating advertising revenues. According to Verma, on days of India playing cricket, the reach of cricket is much higher than any other programmes on that day. For example, he points out that the Natwest final between India and England gathered a record TVR of 22.

Good old Doordarshan, on its part, is in the thick of action as well. The channel is telecasting the India-New Zealand test series comprising two matches exclusively on DD Sports, to be followed by the tri-series between India, Australia and New Zealand commencing on October 24. The Prasar Bharati marketing unit in Mumbai has marketed the entire cricket series for over Rs 90 crore. Doordarshan's Marketing division sold spot buys for Rs 75,000 for 10 seconds on DD Sports and Rs 60,000 for 10 seconds on DD National for the tri-series.

Which brings to the fore the obvious — does viewership of television sports channels, in India, begin and end with cricket?

Not really, say the channel representatives.

Says ESPN's Verma, "Through the years, we have seen that the reach for niche sports such as soccer and F1 has grown and thus it is not just cricket which drives the viewership for sports channels. It is the market which sets priority for its choice of sports."

Elaborates Rijhwani: "Sports television viewership historically has always been event-led in nature. Ten Sports has changed the rules of the sports television business with its programming philosophy and programmes such as Legends, Cricket Classics, Sharjah Gold, Robot Wars, and Weird World of Sports. This has resulted in significantly large number of people tuning into the channel every day."

Ten Sports says it has consistently developed alternatives to cricket from across other sports such as horse racing or hockey, or sports featuring Indian sportsmen such as Narain Karthikeyan. Rijhwani points out examples such as live coverage of the Mumbai horse racing season 2002-03, or hockey with the channel telecasting the 2002 Champions Trophy. "What went behind this success was a concerted marketing and programming effort by the channel. Ten Sports characterised hockey players by using some facets of their playing skill. The channel had run 20-30-second interstitials based on this theme before the tournament began. The basic idea behind using such nicknames was to make people relate to these characters," she says.

Ten Sports' forthcoming hockey coverage will include the live telecast of the Olympic qualifiers in early 2004, in which India will participate, adds Rijhwani.

According to McDonald, besides cricket and hockey, Ten Sports is committed to motor sport through the World Rally Championships. The channel plans to extend this coverage in the coming year to live Sunday Rallying as well.

McDonald adds that Ten has broken further ground in India with live coverage of horse racing from India, Dubai and the UK.

Explaining the need to focus beyond cricket, McDonald says, "Developing sports beyond cricket is a business entity as the price of cricket rights spiral. We are lucky because our company organises the Sharjah and Morocco cricket events and that means we have a firm base of guaranteed live cricket, in addition to all international cricket played in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the West Indies."

While MAX's sports-related activity is focused on cricket, Jain says that if other sports do come in the big league as far as television viewership is concerned, the channel will do the needful. "We are, in any case, a premium Hindi movies and entertainment channel, as opposed to 24-hour sports channels," says Jain.

Programming, meanwhile, isn't just about live telecasts.

Take ESPN. The channels say that besides live sports action, it brings to its consumers other sporting programmes which are `able to attract a lot of viewers'. As Verma points out, "We bring to our consumers programmes for sports like cricket, Formula 1, soccer and tennis, news shows, and special shows such as Harsha-Online and Harsha-Unplugged."

Throwing light on some numbers, Verma says that Harsha-Online, for one, has grown 12 per cent over the financial year 2003. Elaborating further, ESPN says that viewership for its Sportsline aired on weekdays, for example, has grown at the rate of 11 per cent. Similarly, viewership of the channel's show, SportsCentre, has grown by 16 per cent, says Verma, adding that starting early this month, Sportsline is being shown in Hindi. SportsCentre, meanwhile, is changing over to English.

SET Max, meanwhile, is all excited about its currently on, five-month-long India's Road to the Finals (IRTF) programme, showing highlights and action from the Cricket World Cup held earlier this year. Being promoted as a `mega weekend series that relives the frenzy of the Indian cricket team's sustained performance during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003', the series recaptures special moments of the Indian cricket team's journey to the finals of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003. The IRTF series will cover all 11 matches of the Indian team during the tournament, and is being hosted by Charu Sharma and Mandira Bedi.

MAX expects IRTF to bring in fairly good results. "We have high expectations from this series. Apart from several sponsors, in general, advertisers across various categories have signed up," says Jain.

Ten Sports' McDonald says that documentary series aired on the channel such as the History of Football have created awareness about sports from different regions.

Sports channels are obviously brushing shoulders with those in the big league of television viewing.

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