Ten Sports on a high with World Cup Hockey 2010

Ten sports latest possession World Cup Hockey 2010 has given a good opening to the channel. Substantial amount had been spent in promoting the event through different ATL and BTL activities. Adgully had an exclusive chat with Atul Pande, CEO, Ten Sports who talks about the on-going sports event.

Explaining the promotion activities Pande says, "We have done significant amount of ATL and BTL activities along with our lead sponsors Hero Honda and we have built awareness around world cup and tried to bring back the attention to our national sports, hence we used the tagline Phir dil do Hockey ko."

The opening day of the tournament saw India-Pakistan tussle on the turf that India won splendidly by 3 goals which certainly is a booster to the tournament.

Commenting on this, he says, "I think we have met up our target, in the first two matches we have got a TRP of around 1.5 and we are very happy with this and from the fact that most of our partners and clients are getting good response by advertising with the event."

Pande expects the viewership is typically coming from north part of the country, urban areas and the metro cities.

The channel has managed to rope many big brands for the event this time who advertise in dollars like Hero Honda, Nokia, Coke, Seagram's, MTS etc. This is rare for any non-cricketing event, so is the advantage of world cup happening on the home turf or is it a new trend that is beginning.

Pande explains, "My thought is that most of the big brands are trying to diversify the portfolio of sports advertising. As you know bulk of sports advertising in this country goes into cricket which is fairly expensive buy, so this gives them media efficient buy and they come in as sponsors or co-sponsors and they get access to certain innovation which probably is superior. As these events get more popular I think we will see more investment buying from larger corporate."

The channel has sold most of the inventory and according to media reports inventories for the India-Pakistan matches were sold at a bigger amount than other matches. Pande did not comment on this.

The end of the tournament that is last two days of the event the national game of India is going to clash with an event from the unofficial national game of the country, cricket. IPL season 3 the hottest property for the season is beginning from 12th March, 2010 which has the very potential of affecting the viewership of the on-going World Cup Hockey.

On this Pande believes, "If it will be India in the finals probably it will not affect it at all. I think IPL matches are not clashing with the timings. Both the games will more than hold their craze. I hope if India enters the final contest then I am sure it will attract more eyeballs."

On asking Pande that can the viewers expect Ten Sports showing similar kind of enthusiasm for other non-cricketing sports in the future to which he answers, "Actually ten sports compared to other sports channel India has the most diversified portfolio. We have rights for Indian football and we show close to 100 live matches every year of Indian football like Federation Cup and Santosh Trophy. We would also like to support Indian hockey and this is our first step in this direction."

With this we expect the channel will help the non-cricketing games to get benefited in some way, as Pande said it is the first step in the same direction.