MUMBAI: India is pumped up as cricket mania of another kind is all set to take the entire country by storm just as Chris Gayle’s massive sixes. As India Ka Tyohaar, the Indian Premier League (IPL) welcomes Indians in its eighth season, official broadcast network Multi Screen Media (MSM) is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that India’s hot selling multimillion dollar property reaches audiences across the length and breadth of the country.
MSM's newly launched channel Sony Kix will carry Tamil and Telugu feeds, Sony Six will have the English feed, while Max and Sony Aath will have Hindi and Bengali feeds respectively.
“Our flagship show Extraaa Innings will continue this year as well. It will be a pre-show, mid-show and post analysis of the match that will be common across feeds. Our marketing plans involve a nationwide campaign focused on a 360 degree plan, right from radio, print, television as well as outdoor. Along with the BCCI, we will have mass scale screenings in 16 cities with 10,000 odd capacities,” informs Sony Six and Kix business head Prasana Krishnan.
The commentators for the Telugu feed will be Venugopal Rao, Venkatpathy Raju, and MSK Prasad, while for the Bengali feed it will be Arun Lal, Devdas Gupta, Abhishek Jhunjunwala, Devang Gandhi, Savadun Mukherjee and Ranade Bose. On the other hand S Ramesh, Hemang Bhadani, V Chandrashekhar, Satyanarayan, and S Srinivas will be the match commentators for the Tamil feed.
The network is clearly betting big on outdoor to reach a wider range of audience. Throwing light on the marketing activations, Max marketing head Vaishali Sharma says, “Apart from mass media, we will come up with clutter breaking innovations. We have already started a countdown ticker at Juhu beach in Mumbai along with LED lights and it will continue till 8 April. Fireworks display will start before the opening match.”
Sharma also informs that LED projections along with the IPL logo and fireworks will be displayed on prominent buildings as projector vans move across Mumbai.
“We will also project our TVCs keeping in mind India Ka Tyohaar and it will continue for a couple of days. Something similar has also been planned in Kolkata besides Mumbai since the games begin there,” adds Sharma.
Speaking about the plan to stage screenings in 16 cities, Sharma opines that the concept is completely new to the country. People who do not have a chance to visit the stadiums will be able to experience the magnitude of the games and the in-stadia experience. A huge outdoor hoarding has also been displayed near Hotel Tulip Star Juhu in the western suburbs of Mumbai. Accompanying this hoarding is a photo booth where people can go and click pictures as India rejoices in an all new season of the IPL.
“Canters will move across the city creating a high amount of buzz of dhol baaja announcing and encouraging people to come and visit these venues. The entry is free and people can come and cheer together,” says Sharma.
Sharma also adds confidently that year on year the network has increased its audience base and already has a cumulative viewership of 190 million so far. “It’s only going to go up further with the addition of all the language feeds we have launched this year besides the great season we have this year,” concludes Sharma.
The tournament will feature a total of 60 matches, including the live telecast of the opening ceremony on 7 April, the home and away matches between the franchises, the qualifying playoffs and the finals. The knockout stage will be from 19 – 22 May and conclude with the final match on 24 May, 2015. As MSM bets big on this season of the IPL, we wish it all the very best.
