SET hoping to ride the IPL wave

Excerpts from Power Breakfast on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » Nifty BSE | NSE 25/05/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Nifty?

By Ramya Ramamurthy , CNBC-TV18

 

Sony Entertainment Television is hoping to ride the IPL wave back into the No.3 spot. With four new shows hosted by celebrities like Salman Khan, Urmila Matondkar and Mona Singh, Sony may be on the comeback trail.

 

The last time filmstars went head to head on television was in the KBC era when Sony's shows with Govinda and Madhuri Dixit took on Star Plus' Amitabh Bachchan- we all know how that turned out!

 

Eight years later, Sony is hoping to stage a comeback of sorts with 4 new shows - fronted by star power. What's different this time is the Indian Premier League, which has consistently scored higher ratings than primetime entertainment fare. And Sony has held back upto 150 seconds of airtime to promote its new shows during the IPL matches, which seems to have worked. Five sponsors including Vodafone, LG, L'Oreal, and Proctor & Gamble have signed on for Salman Khan's 10 Ka Dum show a month before it airs - at an estimated 20% premium.

 

Rohit Gupta, President - Ad Sales, SET India said, "We are hoping that we consolidate our Number Three position to begin with and then hit Number Two once that happens."

 

Shashi Sinha, CEO, Lodestar Universal, said, "I'm willing to admit that I made a mistake - I thought IPL would not work but we are the first to get back on board - in fact I think the following shows will also do well and I have signed on my clients as sponsors for those as well."

 

If Sony manages to pull off at least two of the four new shows, it will be a turnaround. It had lost the Number Three spot to new channels like NDTV Imagine and more recently 9x. The WSG Sony combine had bagged the 10-year media rights to IPL for nearly USD 1 billion. Currently ad rates for ten second spots on IPL are between Rs 2 to 4 lakhs.