KOLKATA: The India tour of Australia is underway and is making waves in a cricket-worshipping nation such as ours. Post a rough start, the Men in Blue are back to winning ways and have garnered a remarkable response on SonyLIV.
The high-octane tournament has more than doubled up viewership on SonyLIV, coupled with five times rise in daily average subscriptions on the platform. With simultaneous streams across English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, 50 per cent of viewership have flowed in from Hindi and regional languages feeds for the event so far.
Advertisers have also reacted with great interest, with as many as over 70 brands coming on board for the cricketing event. With brands like Winzo and McDowell’s No.1 Soda being brought in as co-powered sponsors, the platform has locked in businesses across categories like insurance, banking, gaming, tourism, electronics, FMCGs and more. Some of these sponsors are Proctor & Gamble, Lenovo, Seagram’s Royal Stag Packaged Drinking Water, Association of Mutual Funds of India, IIFL amongst others. Additionally, advertisers like Apple, Castrol, Horlicks, Dell, Vimal Elaichi, RBI, SBI Mutual Funds, Berger Paints, ICICI Pru Life & Mutual Funds, Australia Tourism, Acko General Insurance, and more have also come forward to advocate their support for the ongoing India Tour of Australia.
"The India tour of Australia has opened to a thunderous response from the audience and advertisers alike. Riding on the increase in viewership, we are expecting a 50-60 per cent revenue growth on the platform over the last series. We are already sold out for ODIs and T20s and have only 15-20 per cent inventory left for the Test matches. Cricket has always been a major consumption driver for us, and we hope to see the reactions spiralling in the upcoming matches of the tour," SonyLIV digital business ad sales revenue head Ranjana Mangla commented.
After registering their first win of the tour in the third ODI, Team India will now look to dominate in the T20I matches. The T20I will be followed by the much-awaited four Test matches for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
