NEW DELHI: Omnisport, Perform Group’s market-leading global sports news and content agency, is all set to enhance its offering in India by adding three Indian languages --- Hindi, Bengali and Malyalam --- highlighting its rising commitment to India and the market’s importance to the company’s global strategy.
To begin with, Omnisport, which is the video and editorial wire service from UK-headquartered Perform Group’s vast sports content library, will start off by offering short form sports videos relating to football, cricket and, possibly, an indigenous game in the three Indian languages.
Going forward, Omnisport is also exploring setting up a production facility in Mumbai by year end or early 2018 to widen its coverage and presence in the Indian market, which is fairly limited at present.
Once the Mumbai production facility is up and running, the Omnisport services offered to clients in India will build greater relevance for Indian publishers and have increased coverage of Indian domestic sports, including the likes of kabaddi.
Over the next 12-18 months, Perform Group is looking at investing approximately Rs 50 million in India, which may look --- and definitely is --- small, but is a sure sign of the Sussex company looking at expanding its presence in India where football is getting a growing audience (while Indian national team’s global ranking is nothing to crow about, football enjoyed upwards of 50 million conversations involving fans from India last year). Nearly 60 per cent of the content handled by Perform Group globally comprises football.
Some of the clients of Perform Group in India include The Hindu group, The Hindustan Times, Veqta and a leading sports portal in India.
Omnisport works with most of the leading global sports broadcasters and digital publishers, including beIN Sports, ESPN, DirecTV, Yahoo, Eurosport, Fox Sports Asia, BBC Sport, Sky Sports, BT Sport, Malaysia’s Astro, L’Equipe and Diario AS.
Focusing on the world’s biggest sports stories, Omnisport offers clients high-quality digital sports video in 15 languages at present. The service includes breaking news, match action and content enriched with category-leading Opta sports data, together with up-to-the minute editorial content, including reports, news, exclusive interviews, features, data-enhanced editorial and live blogs. Omnisport’s newsgathering network extends to more than 250 specialist journalists on 12 international news desks, and a larger network of stringers.
According to Wikipedia, Perform Group was created in September 2007 through the merger of two businesses --- Premium TV Limited, a provider of web and mobile solutions to the sports sector, and the Inform Group, a digital sports rights agency. The businesses were rebranded PERFORM in January 2008 under the leadership of current Chief Executive Officer Simon Denyer, and former joint CEO Oliver Slipper.
