MUMBAI: The Indian media and entertainment (M&E) industry has started to accept the concept of media asset management and is slowly, but gradually, increasing its adoption, according to Frost and Sullivan.

The report finds that the market earned $3.5 million in 2012 and estimates this to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 15 per cent till 2018. There are about 18 vendors that offer solutions for media asset management (MAM) needs of broadcast, production, and other media companies.

As the magnitude of media files that broadcasters have to manage on a regular basis increases, the need for applications that enable the management, acquisition, authoring and editing, deep indexing, meta tagging, querying and retrieving, manipulation, annotation and display, and repurposing of media assets also rises. This will be the most important driver for an increasing demand for MAM solutions.

Indian broadcasters who have implemented MAM solutions believe that new adopters would be attracted to simplified and standardized solutions that would reduce complexity and enhance reliability. Increasing awareness for MAM among key decision-makers in the broadcasting segment will also bolster the demand for such solutions.

Frost & Sullivan finds that the laborious process of digitising tape-based workflow that has to be done prior to MAM deployment is also seen as a challenge to market advancement. Nonetheless, digitization of tape-based archive content tops Indian broadcasters? agendas and will continue to do so for the next 24 months.

However, the high costs associated with international MAM products, together with the heightened price sensitivity of Indian consumers, has encouraged local vendors to develop low-cost, customized MAM solutions. These frequently do not conform to standards used by international vendors and, moreover, lead to high industry fragmentation.

Frost & Sullivan?s analysis finds that while there are several local vendors burgeoning to cater to MAM requirements among broadcasters, there continues to be a higher demand for "tried and tested" solutions.

MUMBAI: In a single sport country like India, it is important for all the stakeholders in sports industry to come together and build other sports besides cricket through a right model and create an ecosystem that works for everyone in the value chain - federations, broadcasters and fans.

That, the experts believe, will reduce the dependency of sports broadcasters on cricket, which is becoming financially unviable due to steep rise in acquisition of properties.

Television is one of the most important components of popularising sports. It is broadcast rights fee that helps sporting bodies world over to fund the development of sports - whether it be creating infrastructure, developing talent or attracting talent.

World Sport Group South Asia CEO Venu Nair believes the right model for any sports federation in India is to grow their sport by reaching out to as many people as possible. He also cautioned sports federations against blindly following the Indian Premier League (IPL) model.

"Every other day you see an IPL-styled league with a new logo pasted on it. IPL became the success that it is because there was a thriving ecosystem in place before it launched. Other sports won?t taste success by just emulating the IPL model," Nair said, while speaking at Ficci-Frames 2013.

His suggestion to federations: Forge strategic partnerships with broadcasters where both rights owner and rights holder are equitable partners. He also suggested that the role of a public broadcaster should not be undermined in popularising a sport.

"A sport like Football can become popular if it works with a public broadcaster. That will help a sport to be sampled by more people and then make it a habit for viewers to watch that sport," he averred.

The credit for making cricket a huge success on television goes to Doordarshan, feels Nair.

"There were lots of triggers that made Cricket popular. One of those was Doordarshan. People started following the sport because of Doordarshan. It played a large part in driving traction for cricket," said Nair during a panel discussion on ?Sports: Economic viability and the crisis within?.

Cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle, who was moderating the session, pointed out how BSkyB built EPL into a powerhouse in UK.

All India Football Federation (AIFF) General Secretary Kushal Das feels the quality of Indian football has to be on par with international football.

"The problem with Indian football is not so much cricket as it is football itself. Today, football fans have access to the best of Football leagues whether it is EPL, La Liga or Bundesliga. When you compare Indian football with these top leagues, we don?t match up," Das said.
 
Indian football, he feels, suffers a double whammy of almost non-existent infrastructure and lack of talented players. Unless these issues are dealt with, Indian football will continue to suffer.

Das said a partnership between a pubcaster and federation will only work if both the partners work in tandem towards the same goal. In the Indian context, he said the bad quality of production and commentary on DD can put off viewers who are exposed to international quality football.

Another critical factor hampering the growth of non-cricket sports is the lack of clarity on scheduling. An annual calendar that lays down the schedule is important, not just from broadcasters point of view but also for a fan.

Indian Football, in particular, suffers from scheduling problem that has been giving nightmares to AIFF?s broadcast partner Ten Action+.

Addressability & price cap de-regulation

Sports broadcasters at the session batted for de-regulation of price cap on cricket which hasn?t changed much since 2003 while the cost of cricket rights have gone North in the subsequent years. Cost is a structural issue which can only be addressed by ramping up subscription revenues.

Star India Head of Sports Nitin Kureja said the government has to relax price regulation and let the market forces decide the price. "The revenue side has been a huge challenge. In fact, it has been a challenge to exploit all revenue streams. While the cost of cricket rights have gone up, the subscription revenue has not kept pace," Kukreja stated.

"Regulation should have differential treatment for different sports," he added. Star India had bagged the BCCI media rights for Rs 38.51 billion till 2018.

Neo Sports Broadcast COO Prasanna Krishnan opined that addressability was a bigger issue than price cap.

"You can charge 1,000 rupees but if you don?t know how many subscribers you have, it won?t make much of a difference. So in my opinion, addressability is a bigger issue. Digitisation in that sense will be a game changer," Krishnan contended.

He also felt that the mandatory sharing of feeds with the pubcaster has robbed the broadcasters of exclusivity. Pilferage of signals only worsens the situation for a sports broadcaster who has committed millions of dollars.

"The public broadcaster in our country is too cricket-centric. That has to change if the intention is to air events of national importance. Why doesn?t public broadcaster telecast I-League?," Krishnan questioned.

He said the pubcaster is choosing events that are commercially viable.

WSG?s Nair, however, put the blame squarely on broadcasters for the broadcast rights going through the roof. "I am sure the broadcasters themselves know that they won?t be able to recoup their investments when they bid for cricket rights. That is something that we should address. There are certain rights that have some value," he said.

Concurring with Krishnan?s view, IPL CEO Sundar Raman said sports broadcasting is driven by subscription income globally unlike India which is dependent on ad revenue that keeps fluctuating depending on seasons.

"When you are dependent on ad revenue to recover your investments, you are at the mercy of media agencies. Across the globe, sports is driven by subscription. The amount of money that broadcasters get in India as subscription revenue is pittance," Raman explained.

Raman said the addressability of audience is the single biggest challenge for the sports industry.

Apart from addressability, the key to growing sports is to market it well, micro-targetting audience by going regional and exploiting other revenue streams, said Raman.

On marketing front, Raman said the Hockey India League (HIL) did a good job which sports bodies can emulate. The marketing will help build a habit of strong viewing among viewers.

Commentary, he said, is also an important aspect of growing a sport that will help viewers to understand sport better. Broadcasters, he said, should approach different markets by launching regional feeds that will build an instant connect.

"The problem is we tend to treat India as one big mass. There is a big opportunity in regional markets. We should have regional feeds with commentary in regional language," Raman said.

He further stated that rights holders should start exploiting other revenue streams like digital media which will increase the reach of the event. "Consumption of sports on digital medium is increasing, we should tap into this segment but broadcasters are focusing on internet fearing loss of viewers."

NEW DELHI: The Government has reiterated that it has no proposal to control the number of television channels in the country, pointing out that the number of private television channels at present is 833.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari reminded Parliament that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had also opined against any cap on the number of channels to be uplinked or downlinked in the country.

However, the government is taking some steps to ease the problems relating to increasing demand on satellite bandwidth. These include leasing transponder capacity from foreign operators to meet the demand, and building and launching additional INSAT/GSAT satellites to augment the transponders capacity in the country.

Earlier this year, it had been revealed that 14 of the 58 space missions to be launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as a part of 12th Five Year Plan, 2012-17 are linked to communication.

GSAT 10, GSAT 15, GSAT 16, GSAT 17, and GSAT 18 will specifically be communication satellites to augment the INSAT system with C and Ku band Transponders.

GSAT 9 will be a communication satellite to augment the INSAT system with C band transponders.

GSAT 14 and GSAT 11S will be experimental communication satellites, while GSAT 6 and GSAT 6A will be multi-media mobile communication satellites for strategic applications.

The five launch vehicle missions are GSLV ? D5 (Development flight with indigenous cryogenic stage for launching GSAT 14 satellite); GSLV D6 (for launching of GSAT 6 into Geosynchronous transfer orbit); GSLV F09 (for launching of GSAT 9 communication satellite); GSLV ? F11 (for launching of GSAT-6A satellite); and GSLV Mk III D1 (first developmental flight of GSLV Mk III for launching GSAT-19E satellite).

GSAT 7 is a communication satellite for special users, and both GSAT 11 and GSAT Ka are advanced Ka band satellite for VSAT communications. GSAT 19E is a new generation experimental communication satellite.

MUMBAI: With a lot of live sports content at its disposal, Star India is gearing up to launch a new sports channel under the Star Sports brand on 11 March.

Christened Star Sports 2, the channel will have international football as its driver content. It will also show other sports content.

Star has the broadcast rights to football properties like English Premier League, Spanish league La Liga and Italian league Serie A for India besides FA Cup rights.

"Yes, we are launching a new sports channel on 11 March. Star Sports 2 will primarily have international football content besides other sports content," Star India COO Sanjay Gupta tells Indiantelevision.com.

The channel will be initially available on digital cable networks and will be subsequently rolled out on analog cable networks across the country.

Star is launching the new channel to avoid overlapping of cricket content with other sports content. The problem only accentuates when India cricket is on as the broadcaster has a bi-lingual feed in English and Hindi on Star Sports and Star Cricket.

It will also help the broadcaster to streamline the scheduling of its different properties.

"We have a lot of sports content, so at times we are unable to utilise this content when there are multiple events lined up simultaneously," Gupta explains.

The broadcaster has dedicated supply of cricket content throughout the year as it holds the media rights for three cricket boards, India, Australia and England, in addition to the ICC rights. Besides cricket and football, Star also boasts of rights to properties like Formula One, MotoGP, Wimbledon, Australian Open in Tennis, and PGA Tour.

News Corps, which had last year acquired ESPN?s stake in joint venture ESPN Star Sports (ESS) for $335 million, had restructured its sports broadcasting business in Asia. While the India business was brought under Star India, the rest of Asia business came under Fox Star Sports Asia under Peter Hutton.

Subsequently, the ESPN brand name was dropped across Asia except India where Star is awaiting government clearance on the ESS acquisition before taking a call on change of brand name.

"We have still not decided what we will do with ESPN. We are considering both Fox as well as Star brand name. However, a final call is yet to be taken," Gupta discloses.