MUMBAI: Nimbus Sport, the sports marketing arm of Nimbus Communications Limited on Saturday announced its plans to target over Rs 11 billion ($ 250 million) in sales from sports activity in 2006 and 2007.
This figure is spread across various sports properties including Friday's deal for Pakistan Cricket Board sponsorship and signage rights for five series across three years. Also, Nimbus Sport has been signed on for a five-year television production and sponsorship marketing contract of Indian football by Zee Sports.
Commenting on this announcement, Nimbus Sports CEO Digvijay Singh said, "We are delighted to win the PCB multi-year contract as that extends our business footprint in cricket to virtually every major test playing nation. We are also in talks for three major international rights management and television production contracts this year."
Amongst Nimbus Sport's prominent on going multi-year contracts are the management of commercial rights of ICC cricket events - Champions Trophy '06 and the Cricket World Cup '07 (mandated by GCC), the A1 Grand Prix World Cup of Motor Sport (mandated by Team India), the Afro Asia Cup cricket '06 and '07(mandated by ACC), Kingfisher Challenger Series '05, Mumbai Cricket Festival 05-06 and several other regional sports properties.
Nimbus Sports president Satish Menon said, "The football contract from Zee is a fantastic opportunity for us to bring to bear our global best practices to take Indian football to a strong no. 2 sport position in India. As demonstrated by our monetisation and globalisation of the Kingfisher Challenger series cricket, the rights management can take India's domestic sport to a global level."
Queried over how Nimbus had arrived at these projections, Menon admitted that the bulk of the revenues were expected to come in from the World Cup (to be held in the West Indies) and secondly from next year's Champions Trophy (India hosting).
Menon said the sales targets from existing sponsorship and TV rights for the World Cup were $100 million and for the Champions it was $35 million. On air sales from both tourneys were projected to garner $55 million, Menon stated.
Expectations from some of the other tourneys break down as follows:
Next year's Afro-Asia Cup, which India is likely to host - $8.2 to 10 million.
A-1 year one - $4 million; year two - $6 -7 million,
Football - $ 6-7 million
