The UEFA Euro 2016 has got off to a rocketing start. With the on-field action grabbing the headlines, the Indian market has moved swiftly to capture the biggest football flavor of this season. Mobile handset maker GioneeMobiles has come on board as the title on-air sponsor after their successful rebranding stint with the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League.
Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN), hold the rights for Euro's broadcast in India and are beaming it across their channels and online onsonyliv.com. Last heard before the beginning of the tournament, they had sold almost 80 % of the advertising inventory. Highly placed sources close to these deals reveal that brands have allocated tentatively Rs 8-10 crore towards sponsorship.
According to a report in the Business Standard, SPN is continuing with an activity it had started dabbling with in 2014 where it had multi-lingual feeds for the FIFA World Cup with a Bengali feed on Sony Aath, the Bangla entertainment channel under the network. Euro 2016 will be available in six languages, English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. Sony SIX will telecast the English language feed while Sony ESPN will give viewers the other options.
Prasana Krishnan, executive vice-president and business head of Sports Cluster, SPN, says, "When we experimented with the Bengali feed, we realised that there is an appetite for the sport in the regional markets. With Euro 2016, we intend to test out more markets and so we have added three more languages. It is perhaps the first time in India that a non-cricket tournament of this scale will be available in so many languages."
According to the ESP Properties - SportzPower India Sports Sponsorship Report 2016, on the back of Hero Indian Super League (ISL), ground sponsorship for Football shot up from Rs 59.5 crore in 2014 to Rs 114 crore in 2015, a jump of 91.6% .
Hitesh Gossain, CEO of Onspon.com, gives us a lowdown on the brands that have moved on-board for the European football fiesta, "According to market sources and SPN estimates, the brands that have agreed to be a part of the Euro bandwagon are Honda Cars India, Idea, Carlsberg, Hero Cycles, Crompton Greaves, Micromax, YES Bank and Renault. E-commerce players such as Amazon, OLX and Paytm were also said to be keenly interested in taking up slots. As the games are shown on Sony SIX and Sony ESPN channels at the primetime slots of 6:30 pm and 9:30 pm, and 12:30 am. SPN's sales team has quoted a rate of Rs 2.25-2.5 lakh for ad-spots and most brands have accepted this.
