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In India cricket is like a religion, and World Cup is the biggest festival. Historically, the event has got large audiences glued to their television sets and radio boxes but in the last 2-3 years, with the penetration of smartphones and Internet, the game is beginning to be consumed on the online platform as well. 
 
For the records, online (web and mobile) viewership of IPL 2014, that was shown on starsports.com and Times Internet's Gocricket.com, reached a base of over 10 million for first 15 matches, data by GroupM-owned media buying firm Mindshare said. 
 
And, the video streaming of ICC World T20 2014 on Starsports.com attracted more than 80.9 lakh users during the fortnight-long tournament delivering more than 2.24 crore visits culminating to a total of 101 million live minutes of video consumed. Now, these are huge numbers and digital publishers are leaving no stones unturned to get better stats this year. 
 
Stakeholders Gear Up 
 Star <keyword id="6356028" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sports">Sports</keyword> is the official broadcaster for the 2015 World Cup that will be held in Australia. Starsports.com will offer live streaming and 24x7 video-on-demand accessible through the Web, WAP and Apps on 200+ devices. 
 Apart from Star, other online portals that attract cricket consuming traffic have also prepared for the day. ESPNCricinfo launched a 100 day multimedia campaign as a run up to the event to engage with its readers by providing them all the relevant content related to the event. Their focus is on videos, images, quick score updates, along with crisp analysis from the former Indian <keyword id="1520" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Cricketer">cricketer</keyword>, Rahul Dravid. 
 
On the editorial front, it has created a separate page called World Cup 2015, which is giving the latest news, polls, team updates, fixtures, along with highlights of previous World Cups such as best innings, bowling spells, catches, and other stuff. It has also launched a special guide for the World Cup priced at around $12. 
 
Ramesh Kumar, head, ESPN Digital Media India and ESPNCricinfo, says, “World is expanding to digital and the growth of the medium vis–a-vis traditional is going very strong. We are walking on the same path, but side by side keep a strong focus on the traditional medium too.” 
 Cricket Country, owned by ZEEL, has created a separated page for the live updates of the event, where in constant editorials on pre-world cup analysis have been updated. It has sent reporters to <keyword id="124742" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ground-Zero">ground zero</keyword> and working towards generating viral videos around the World Cup, showcasing people’s passion. 
 
Sandeep Amar, COO, India.com, said, “We have launched a new design UI/UX for users for a new enhanced look. We have also improved our score card to make it easier for our visitors to analyse the match quickly.” 
 Another popular portal <keyword id="2727667" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sportskeeda-com">Sportskeeda.com</keyword>, has also created a micro site for the event, which is populated with current news, opinions, and other flashes from the previous world cups. 
 
Musab Abid, managing editor, Sportskeeda, said, “We want to do things that are different and attract niche audiences. Our writers will develop content around humour, tweets which will come in, create features based on statistic and develop exciting and different forms of contents for the consumers.” 
 
The Game of Scorecards 
 
Publishers believe that while live streaming will be with Star, a large amount of traction will come from score card updates and then the questions arises who can do it the right and the fastest? 
 
Anupam Mukherji, better known as Fake IPL player and co-founder, Pitch Invasion says, “What matters most to the cricket fans is the score. Those who are able to provide the score faster will get the ball. Mobile streaming will not be as big as mobile score updates in texts. Hence, apps supporting mobile updates will be much more in demand. Providing users with a live updates experience along with social interactivity would be interesting.” 
 Mukherji has distributed his Hindi Scoryboard product to near 55 million <keyword id="6355645" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="android">Android</keyword> users and also doing social media integration; offering brands the options of integrating their social media campaign with the live scores. 
 
Since all the matches are in daytime (Indian Standard Time), online will play a big role as people will follow it on the move and mostly on the handheld devices. “This time, I expect a very high number of people to be following cricket in Hindi,” said Mukherji. It is important to note here that according to an IAMAI report there were over 173 million mobile Internet users in India in December, 2014 and this will reach to 213 million in June, 2015. This figure was 46 million in 2011. 
 
Advertiser Response: Time To Make Money 
 
According to media planners, the expected ad spends on the ICC World Cup 2015 will be to the tune of Rs 1, 200 crore while the overall cricket spends could be around Rs 2,500 crore including the IPL. Cricket is an assured bet for advertisers in India. World Cup drives huge audiences and publishers are keen on charging premium rates for it. A major opportunity this time will be sponsoring the scorecards since most publishers will compete with it. 
 Cricketcountry.com has got six advertisers so far and the slot is open for one or two more advertisers. “We have advertising partners from sectors like automobiles, <keyword id="34523" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="fmcg">FMCG</keyword> groups, Financial Groups and Banks,” said Amar. ESPNCricinfo tells that it has Gionee, <keyword id="6355629" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Google">Google</keyword> and several other partners for it. While Sportskeeda also claimed to have quite a few advertisers who will be using its microsite for their campaigns. 
 
Publishers point that the sentiment is high among the advertisers and their inventories are selling like hotcakes, but they mention that only those advertisers who have a certain association with cricket will join the brand wagon especially for online. 
 
While Mukherji feels that the excitement among the advertiser is low this time. “Everyone is complaining that the World Cup inventory is yet not sold. It’s been softer than most IPL seasons over the past few years, possibly because the Indian team’s performance in Australia tri-series was low,” he adds. 
 
Ad spends is divided into search, social, affiliations, performance and display. “We have 50 % of the ad spends in search, 15-20% in social, 10-15% in affiliation and performance, 15-22% in display,” said Amar. 
 
Though from the last World Cup in 2011 to 2015, world has changed and especially digital consumption, publishers still hope that despite eventful year for cricket (off ground action), because India is the defending champions, the traction will be good. That said, advertisers are sceptical of India’s performance in the World Cup, and hence, are not showing much interest. 
(Image: The Economic Times) 
(About the author: This article has been contributed by Priyanka Verma.)

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ICC World Cup 2015: Cricket websites set stage to attract niche audiences

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