NEW DELHI: In a content-hungry country like India, digital sports content will always find takers. Sports matches which earlier used to be consumed on TV have swiftly moved into digital space with maximum consumption on mobile. According to emarketer in 2018, 67 per cent of internet users in India aged 16 to 64 watched sports coverage or highlights online during Q3 2018. The most watched sports content is led by cricket followed by football, kabaddi, badminton and hockey.
With an aim to capitalise on the strong demand for digital sports content, Kurate Digital Consulting and Rootanian have joined hands to produce branded content which will leverage the expertise of both within a sports context. This alliance seeks to provide scale and drive engagement across social and other channels as per the defined marketing objectives while creating high quality digital sports content.
Advertising funded programmes are another focus area of this partnership which will be able to leverage sports in a big way to get the advertisers message across.
“As more and more cricket heroes are emerging the propensity to consume cricket on digital platforms are going to increase exponentially. Soccer leagues like the EPL, UEFA Champions league also have a strong following on digital platforms. Domestic leagues in other sports, kabaddi, hockey and sensitivity to develop sports talent in major Olympic disciplines are going to provide the impetus, and the appetite to consume sports will only grow in the country. Brands love to associate with digital sports content as more consumers become mobile first content consumers,” said Uday Sodhi of Kurate Digital Consulting.
With increasing internet and smartphone penetration in India, digital videos accounted for 20 per cent share of the sports rights pie in 2019, and is expected to grow to 40 per cent by 2024. Sports monetization on television as well as digital will be robust, driven by a number of factors including the addition of more than 250 million broadband subscribers over 2019-2024 as per Media Partners Asia.
The road ahead for digital sports content is going to be an equation of demand and supply. With a huge cricket loving audience, the content is propelling more and more youths to go digital. According to a Google study covering search data spanning 2013-17, cricket queries have grown by 80 per cent in just the last two years.
"With all the major sporting events resuming their live telecast, including cricket and EPL, there is going to be a rush for digital sports content to compensate for shortfall in revenue and period of inactivity. All kinds of promotional deals and sponsorships are going to resume in full swing and that’s a big impetus to digital sports content producers," said Naina Toor of Rootanian, creative director & media professional in sports and entertainment.
One of the recent and successful offerings of the collaboration is Viru ki Baithak featuring Virender Sehwag, a daily morning show on Facebook Watch which focuses on cricket with interesting trivia and match analysis around the T20 League in Dubai. Season 1 has been an instant hit with the social media audience, with the episodes garnering millions of views. Viru ki Baithak is the brainchild of Sodhi and Toor, while the IP of the show is owned by Rootanian.
