Disney Star eyes 80% of ad spends in cricket season

MUMBAI: Leading broadcast network Disney Star has set an ambitious goal of securing 80% of the total advertising spends on both TV and digital platforms during the upcoming cricketing events, the Asia Cup and the ICC Men’s World Cup, said a top company executive.

The company plans to capitalize on its presence across TV and digital mediums, offering innovative targeting options, attractive pricing and allure of live action on the field to get a significant portion of the total advertising pie during the tournaments and beyond.

The company is of the view that it is in an advantageous position as its linear network commands the highest viewership, and its marquee cricketing properties featuring the Indian team in 10 matches, including 2-4 India-Pakistan clashes, will help it achieve its ambitions.

Moreover, unlike the Indian Premier League, where it had the TV rights, while Viacom18 had digital rights, the firm has secured exclusive rights of the two properties, making it confident of getting a larger share of the pie.

“Our approach to the market is to talk about India’s largest network for TV and digital. We can reach one billion people through our offerings and that’s the power we are trying to sell,” Ajit Varghese, head of network ad sales, Disney Star, said. “We are not pitting TV against digital. Our plan for advertisers on digital will be customised and appealing, as we will offer attractive pricing and a wide range of targeting options. It will get us a larger share , say, two-thirds, or even 80% of the festive spend over the next few months leading to the festivities across our network,” he added.

Media agency executives, however, said though Disney Star will get a significant share of the ad spending, 80% may not be achievable. “There are no other sporting properties on competing networks of the same stature. Therefore, a disproportionate share will go to Disney Star, but I will be surprised if it crosses 50%, given that every network will have marquee shows and films lined up for the festivities,” an executive of a leading media agency said.

Varghese also highlighted the importance of both TV and digital as mediums for advertising in India. “Television has a massive audience size of 850-900 million. While digital has grown significantly in the last decade and is at 550-600 million, both have headroom to expand.

While the company has not disclosed the sponsors’ names for the two properties yet, he said it has secured associate sponsors for both the Asia Cup and ICC World Cup, and is in talks with potential sponsors as well as spot buyers.

“We are expanding the pool of advertisers so that lot more brands can be a part of the two tournaments. Earlier, when we spoke about cricket, almost 30% of the monies used to come from startups, a sector that is going through a difficult phase. But in the last few months, a new set of clients are coming up and they may not be spending like 2021, but are actually looking at increasing spending,” Varghese added.

He said that some of the categories, which are expected to spend heavily during the festive season, include Auto, Infrastructure, FMCG, and even beverages.

Earlier, there was a perception that cricket can only be bought by large advertisers with budgets upwards of ₹20-25 crore. “We are offering — across TV and digital — plans for all kinds of advertisers. You can spend as low as ₹1-5 crore, ₹5-15 crore and above. we are making sure that the packages are flexible in many ways, be it feed-wise - HD and SD feeds, as well as language, feeds on TV; or at a package level, where you can either choose games or choose India plus non-India or completely non-India games. From 25 options earlier, now we are offering over 75 targeting options to our advertisers,” he said.

Disney Star has also partnered with EYEOTA and PayU to make sure that the data enrichment is happening at a robust level.

“We are playing the role of leading the category, establishing new benchmarks and also being truthful to the metrics that we are talking about. We are making sure that whatever we are approaching whether it’s on the tech capability, whether it’s on the targeting capability, all of these remain robust — including seamless consumer experience and numbers which are authentic,” he added.

Ahead of the Asia Cup, which is starting end of this month, the company is also launching a self-serve platform for its OTT service Disney+Hotstar. The self-serve platform will be available to all video advertisers across the country, and offer deal sizes from ₹200,000 to ₹50 lakh, allowing brands, who have either refrained from or never run campaigns on live sports, thus making advertising on live sports more accessible. It will allow targeting basis geography, language, device type etc., uploading of video creatives in the chosen language and selected content duration.