Sony has secured 11 sponsors for its Tokyo Olympics coverage, with industry insiders estimating it would earn close to Rs 100 crore ($13m/€11m) in advertising revenue from the event. Sony said the number of sponsors may rise to 20. Its top-tier ‘co-presenting sponsors’ are Coca-Cola, dairy products company Amul, motorcycle maker Hero MotoCorp, steelmaker and conglomerate JSW, and mobile gaming company MPL. The games are all set to begin on the 23rd July with events being broadcasted across all linear and digital sports channels owned by sports.
Sony Pictures Network has now taken rapid action on piracy for the broadcast of the Olympics, whose rights it exclusively holds in the Indian subcontinent. With only a few days for the Olympics, The Delhi High Court has directed the unauthorized broadcast of the Tokyo Olympics by illegal websites, multi-system operators, and local cable operators in India.
The court has directed Internet Service Providers to block access to these websites illegally broadcasting the games on their platforms and also asked the Central government to issue necessary directions/notifications calling upon various ISPs to block access to the rogue websites.
Sony had also taken similar action for its cricket events previously, shutting down illegal streams of the India tour of Sri Lanka and England this month.
However, the coverage of primetime events of the Olympics on local time has drawn a lot of apprehensions on the kind of audience it will garner considering the time difference.
Rohit Gupta, Sony’s chief revenue officer, ad sales and international business said, “The response for sports outside cricket has been increasing in the last few years. So that’s been on an uptick now. Brands are looking at big and important global sporting events to advertise and we have seen this in the last four years and also saw this with Euro 2020.”
It is also very likely that Sony will benefit from its OTT platform Sony Liv to generate streams for different sports taking place in the Olympics and the cricket events it owns.