71 percent viewers watched sports in Hindi

After Hindi, Bangla & Tamil  up next

English was the language of sports commentary when it started in India in the early 1940s on All India Radio. The listenership was limited to the English-speaking class. It was in the late 1950s that cricket commentary in Hindi made a beginning. Commentary in the language of the people took the game of cricket to the hinterlands.

The dominance of sports commentary in Hindi continued till the mid-1980s. Live commentary of India winning the 1975 Hockey World Cup & the 1983 cricket world cup were heard by most cricket fans in India in Hindi.

For the older generation, the names of commentators in Hindi such as Jasdev Singh, Suresh Saraiya, Narottam Puri and Ravi Chaturvedi still bring back memories of the 1970s and early 1980s when words created action happening on the cricket field.

2013: Sports channels begin to challenge the traditional rules

By Peter Hutton : Joint CEO of sports media rights company MP & Silva

Peter Hutton is Joint CEO of sports media rights company MP & Silva)

Read more at: http://www.televisionpost.com/television/2013-sports-channels-begin-to-challenge-the-traditional-rules/ | TelevisionPost.com

Peter Hutton is Joint CEO of sports media rights company MP & Silva)

Read more at: http://www.televisionpost.com/television/2013-sports-channels-begin-to-challenge-the-traditional-rules/ | TelevisionPost.com

Peter Hutton is Joint CEO of sports media rights company MP & Silva)

Read more at: http://www.televisionpost.com/television/2013-sports-channels-begin-to-challenge-the-traditional-rules/ | TelevisionPost.com

Welcome to the Year of the Star cricket series featuring the Star Indian cricket team on Star Sports. Quite a last 12 months for Uday Shankar and Nitin Kukreja’s team at Star—they’ve built on their inherited sports business with dynamism and an intent to be local and relevant. In the last year, a huge spend on the next three years of the English Premier League football and a leap into the darkness of the hockey franchise world has shown a continued determination to challenge the rules of the Indian sports traditions. 

Those rules certainly needed re-writing with all the sports channels dragged into losses by the relentless inflation of cricket rights. Now we wait to see if Star can rewrite the rules on collections of revenues with sports as the battering ram of their whole entertainment business. What can’t be disputed is the way that they’ve used the entertainment channels to help cross-promote and build the bigger event to a wider audience.

Sachin’s last Test was a human interest story that transcended sport, and I’m sure the support of the Star network helped maximise the value of that emotional goodbye. Star also deserves credit for their investment in digital content that makes multiple games or multiple views of a sports event available.

Hindi & Indian Languages to take sports to next level : Star India Sports Prez

Star Sports presented a unique series of Knowledge Sessions - the India Pro Leagues Forum 2013 in New Delhi. STAR India President – Sports Nitin Kukreja delivered an engaging and insightful keynote address at the inaugural session of the summit, elaborating on the growing appetite of the Indian sports fans and the enormous growth potential of sports in the country.

Does ‘sport’ in India really begin and end with ‘Big Boys’ Cricket’? Or do we just see it that way? Across the length and breadth of India, there are strong communities and pockets of interest where people are passionately engaged with local sports and local players - football in Bengal, hockey in Punjab and Orissa, badminton in Hyderabad, basketball played in schools and table tennis played in clubs, colleges and offices across the country.

It's Star Sports Cup now : Star's bid to be cricket's synonym

Star TV has so far forked out over $2.9 billion (Rs 17,800 crore) in buying cricket broadcasting rights, which has made it the undisputed leader in the segment. Now, it wants to go one step forward by grabbing sponsorship rights of cricket tournaments. The reason is simple but elegant: it wants to position the Star brand in such a way that it becomes synonymous with cricket in India. Last week, Star TV just did that when it won the title sponsorship rights for all the 13 international cricket matches to be held in India between October 2013 and March 2014 by agreeing to pay Rs 2 crore a match. It was a steal; Star TV was the only bidder and paid 39 per cent lower than what Bharti Airtel had forked out to win the rights last year. It will be the sponsor as well as the broadcaster of these matches.

Star Sports & IMG-Reliance all set to launch IPL style football Super League

Reliance Industries, Star India and IMG are set to launch the `Indian Super League,’ a football championship that will foster local talent and feature international stars with the aim of making the game one of the country’s flagship sports and India a name to reckon with in the global arena.

Share feed with Doordarshan : Delhi High Court to Sports Channels

Upholding Prasar Bharati’s view, the Delhi High Court on Thursday held that whosoever airs a live television broadcast of sporting events of national importance must share the same with national broadcaster Prasar Bharati, which runs Doordarshan & All India Radio, without any commercials.

A bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justice Pradeep Nandrajog made the observations while dismissing a TV channel’s plea seeking a direction to Prasar Bharati not to insist on the live signal of international cricket matches of India without any commercial.

India-Aus series to be Fight for No.1, Star Sports scores with cricket again

Fight for No. 1 : Team India will be seen
in action after almost 2 months 

Team India's all home cricket matches will be aired on Star Sports Network. The BCCI has awarded the rights for telecasting all international matches played in India to Star Sports Network for the period October 2013 to April 30, 2014.

The first in line is 7 ODIs and one T20 match India-Australia series starting 10 October till 2 November, marking the total telecast value at Rs 16 crore. India, the leader in ODI currently with 123 points, will fight Australia to retain the top position as the Aussies are 2^nd with 115 points. If Australia topples India with a comprehensive win then they will be the new no. 1 while if India wins the series they will retain their position. 

DD Sports : Circus Maximus

Torches to the fore at the national athletics meet

Have you watched DD Sports recently? Has anyone watched it? Has Mrinal Pande watched it? We all had to watch it during the Commonwealth Games, and since then, it has been showing free reruns of  that event—and the 2010 Asiad, for good measure. It’s a channel we don’t get our feet wet in if we don’t have to.

Last week, however, I wandered into it and found myself in the finale of the 53rd Senior National Athletics in Ranchi. The last event was the women’s 4x400 metres relay. 

Ten Sports' big shift : from Dubai to Noida

Ten Sports Network ( TSN ) has some prime cricket properties which can be considered hot viewing options for Indian sports TV viewers. This includes the exclusive India rights to telecast action on the field for five cricket boards - South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. As compared to this, rival ESPN Star Sports has the rights to domestic Indian cricket, which it pocketed after committing close to $770 million dollars to the BCCI.  Neo Sports - another sportscaster in India - has the rights to New Zealand cricket, while Sony Entertainment boasts of the highly popular and profitable though controversial Indian Premier League. This apart, TSN has also signed up other sporting properties such as WWE, US Open, ATP Tournaments, WTA, Ryder Cup, Moto GP, Euro league, PGA Championship, Asian Tour, European Tour and Tour De France.

Calcutta Football League & IFA Shield on Jalsha Movies in Bangla : Star Sports is going local

In a bid to expand its footprint beyond film, Star India’s Bengali movie channel, Jalsha, has acquired exclusive broadcast rights of two football events : the Calcutta Football League (CFL) and IFA Shield Tournament. 

 The CFL, which enjoys the distinction of being the oldest football league  in Asia, will be broadcast live on Jalsha Movies starting 8 September,  4:00 pm onward. The upcoming season of the prestigious IFA tourney    too will be aired with the aim of ushering a new era in Bengal’s much       loved sport.

How IBL managed to strike gold against all odds

What went into transforming IBL from the league that
almost didn't make it to one of the success stories 

It is 11 am on an unusually sunny Sunday morning in Mumbai, but Ashish Chadha is still groggy. The previous night ended only at six in the morning for him. There was reason to celebrate for the CEO of Sporty Solutionz, which bought and ran the Indian Badminton League. Against all odds, the League had completed its first season successfully, and how. From the league that almost didn’t happen, it is being compared with the elephant in the room, cricket’s Indian Premier League, and perhaps more importantly, sans the controversies.

The smile on Chadha’s face betrays the relief at having defied the odds. The fates of the boxing and hockey leagues, which by all accounts, went down with a whimper, were still fresh in public memory. Sleepless nights weren’t new to him. In the last year, he has taken at least 300 flights, he says, trying to sell an idea that looked like reaching for the stars. It would either have to be a grand do or a feeble die.

Five brands sign on-air deals for Bundesliga on Neo Sports

NEO Sports Broadcast has announced a list of sponsors for the German Football League.

The associate sponsors for the Bundesliga’s 51st season in 2013-14 are Airtel, Lava, Loreal, Bose and Nike. More brands are in the process of signing up the channel revealed.

                           

The number of sponsors announced is amongst the highest for any football league broadcast in the country. Through these associations, NEO has nearly sold out all inventories on the Bundesliga, the broadcaster claims.

Hindi commentary of BPL enhances ESPN Star Sports ratings

ESPN Star Sports seems to have hit the right notes with its viewers with the telecast of Barclays Premier League (BPL) this year. And it’s no plain statement. The broadcaster which is airing the football league in both English and Hindi this season has reported a 254 per cent jump in its ratings on the inaugural day. Not only this, the broadcaster also recorded a 105 per cent increase in its time spent per viewer on the day.

The league which went on air from 17 August on Star Sports and Star Cricket is also made available in Hindi for the first time. “We believe there is a huge potential for growth in football viewership and that Indian fans would love to consume non-cricket sports as well if the product is packaged well, communicated and presented in an interesting manner,” said ESPN Software India COO Vijay Rajput.

Star Sports' big game plan

Star is in the middle of spending Rs 5,000 crore on bootstrapping sports viewing in a country of some 650 million cricketcrazy consumers. In doing so, Star India team aim to make sports the new religion in the world's youngest population: by taking broadcasting to local-level tourneys; producing sports programming in Indian languages; expanding beyond cricket into sports such as hockey, football, badminton and, even, kabaddi; and powering digital delivery of content via the Internet. Star Sports has taken many cutting-edge decisions such as being the first broadcaster to launch high definition (HD) sports feeds or offering Indian language content in the sports genre.

So what is Star Sports' game plan ? "It's a very simple sociological insight, that passionate consumers of sports are, sort of, surrogate players of that sport," Uday Shankar, Star India Chief told Business Today

This is how they work hard for perfect Telecast

Ever wished you could be in the TV control room at the stadium during a cricket match?

The six that ended the World Cup on the evening of April 2 is an image that will be talked about for generations to come. For the man responsible for getting that picture out to the world, all that mattered was what the next one would be.

In the crowded broadcast control room, where numerous cameras showed the crowds starting to explode in celebration, television broadcast director Deepak Gupta's immediate motive was to get a camera as close as he could to the pitch. 

The wall of monitors © ESPNcricinfo Ltd 

"Give viewers the no-commentary option" - Harsha Bhogle

What if you have no-commentary option? As Indian TV industry is being digitized and rate of digitization is more in rural India than urban households. No-commentary option is not a bad idea. It will challenge commentators to get better, and give fans a choice, writes Harsha Bhogle for ESPNCricinfo.

Technology-driven changes have affected visuals more than they have words and voices. The pictures are better than they have ever been, and they will be better with every passing year, but the voices that add to them haven't changed much. You could, of course, argue that we have come a long way from Richie Benaud's legendary minimalist style to Danny Morrison, who is almost Formula 1 in comparison. And while it is interesting that both have their share of supporters, commentary is not really too different from how it used to be.

Dhoni lends identity to football in India. Will it work for Star Sports?

Through the star cricketer's route, STAR Sports expects to get non-football viewers on to Barclays Premier League. The campaign urges Dhoni fans to 'Join the Game'. Will it work for Star Sports?  

Even if cricket is the biggest craze of the country and Dhoni, the biggest celebrity for it, can football gain popularity on the back of cricket? Will Dhoni's association make that big a difference to Barclays Premier League as a brand?

Commercially speaking, the man who leads the Men in Blue on the ground currently has more than 22 endorsements. Proving his entrepreneurial instinct, Dhoni has acquired equity stakes or key roles in the companies he endorses. He is not that highly urban and sophisticated brat. He appeals to the rural and semi-urban Indians in a very big way." 
Gaining traction with the rural/semi urban masses could also explain the channel's decision to launch Hindi feeds commentary for select 100 matches of the league.Why MSD? There is a two pronged reasoning to this, suggest brand consultants. 

"Why I’m opposed to IPL style football league" - A Football Expert

Written by nigelempson, this article raises some questions about the proposed IPL style Indian Football league.
It has been argued that the IPL was good for cricket so therefore it will be good for football. This is a very simplistic view which ignores the fundamental differences between the two. 

Firstly, you’re not getting the world’s top players – they’re busy playing for the world’s top clubs. Neymar, Ronaldo, Messi, Rooney, Suarez, van Persie, Aguero, Balotelli, Ibrahimovic…they won’t be there. Instead you will get ‘marque’ players who used to be great in days past but who have now retired: players who will pull their boots on one more time to pick up a nice cheque, thank you very much, before going back to retirement. You can add to these, players who either can’t find a club or who are not needed by their existing club.

Can IBL do an IPL for badminton? - A Mint story

Despite being popular non-cricket 

sports are still risky business

Player auctions generated the expected $1.65 mn, big money for badminton, but real challenges lie ahead.

The launch of the league, similar to the Indian Premiere League (IPL) that has enriched cricketers and the country’s cricket board alike, may be good for the players, but its success isn’t guaranteed in a country where cricket gets the lion’s share of viewership as well as sponsorships and advertisements. This despite badminton being a popular game, and one invented in India.