ITW, one of India’s leading management and consulting companies in sports, entertainment and media has brought in several new brand sponsors for ongoing Sri Lanka vs India series, aired on Doordarshan.
ITW Sports has exponentially used sports as a significant platform for improving its market strategies, including sponsorship sales, branding, consulting and marketing for its clients. It has been that way for decades, courtesy of India’s national broadcaster Doordarshan. ITW is also associated with Sony Sports Network as its official advertising agency.
Doordarshan’s sports channel DD Sports still remains in contention to telecast any national sporting event, be it cricket, football, the Olympic Games, amongst others. But cricket which is the most followed and watched sport in the country takes lion share of the viewership on any broadcasting channel.
Though Star Sports Network and Sony Sports Network have roped in the major broadcasting rights for matches of the Indian Cricket Team, DD Sports still reserves a right to telecast the matches along with the other sports networks.
The latest cricketing event to be added to DD Sports’ list is the ongoing bilateral series between Sri Lanka and India, which consist of 3 ODIs and 3T20Is to be played at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo. This series will be aired on the channels of Sony Sports Network and DD Sports simultaneously.
A striking fact which still catches the eye is a major chunk of the rural population in the country still doesn’t have the privilege or opportunity to watch the matches on Star or Sony, where each game is branded in a way to make the viewers more comfortable, interested and interactive. Instead, they watch the games on Doordarshan. As a result 14 per cent of the country’s cricket watching population tune into Doordarshan for cricket. This percentage of the population is mostly from the rural parts of the country where Doordarshan’s reach has no match whatsoever.
According to ITW co-founder and MD, Bhairav Shanth, “It has been estimated that 4/5 people who watch the game on Doordarshan are from the rural areas.”
In a way, Doordarshan is reaching the masses which the other commercial giants are yet to hit. Further providing a great opportunity for the brands and advertising units to target and make a mark on the areas which are yet to be explored commercially.
Providing a platform for this market opportunity, ITW has helped bring in almost a dozen brands as sponsors for the ongoing cricket series aired on DD Sports. These include co-presenting sponsors like Myfab11, Mountain Dew, Ultratech Cement, Indira IVF, Ghadi Detergent, Fogg Deo. A list of brands joined in as associate sponsors as well. The names include Nilon’s, Omni Gel, Cycle Incense sticks, Pepsi, and Glori Soap.
CEO of ITW MWORX, Nikhil Vyas, also spoke on their association with Doordarshan all these years and shared some insights on bringing in so many sponsors. He added, “Advertisers realised that India cricket on DD Sports is a very effective and efficient medium to reach out to an audience size of 40M households in tier 2,3 and smaller towns. The reach of the platform is unmatched which makes it a regular media vehicle for the agencies and clients in the media plans.”
In a country as big as India, there will always be rural areas where commercial broadcasters and OTT platforms miss out. In such a situation, Doordarshan will always strike in and entertain the rural population of the country, and always be an opportunity for commercial entities to invest.