 If I may please invite on stage Mr. Uday Sodi, Executive VP and head digital business Sony Live. Sir, if you could please come on stage and felicitate Mr. Vair Dinathan and give our official photographer a nice photo please. He's been struggling really hard. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. We will move on to our next panel discussion and it's a very interesting panel, something I find very intriguing as well because it has the word sports in it. Marketing through sports, sponsorship rights and must-haves to deliver marketing impact. Ladies and gentlemen, I would request you to put your hands together as we welcome on stage our moderator and panelists. The moderator for this session is Mr. Gaurav Kalra, Senior Editor, ESPN Crick Info and our panelists Mr. Ajadang, Head Marketing, Ultra Tech Cement, Mr. Uday Sodi, if I may trouble you again, Executive VP and head digital business Sony Live and Mr. Vineet Karnak, Business Head, ESP Properties Group M. Let's hear it for them, ladies and gentlemen. Let's not be restricted in our applause for these gentlemen on stage. Good evening. It's good to see so many people still in the hall. We've been waiting for a while to do this. The topic has already been introduced, so we'll get straight into it. I think we have about half an hour or so, so we'll talk for about 20 minutes and then open this up for some questions. Well, Uday, since we are partners in a sense, you might as well get the first go at this. You've been doing this for a while now and it now seems like the buzzword is digital, digital, digital. Everyone seems to be talking about it. So just kind of set the stage up for us. What have been your big learnings as far as this relationship between sport and digital and how it's grown over the last few years? It's an interesting space. I've been in this digital space for the last 15, 17 years and the last three, four years has been very exciting for sports and sports and digital seems to be just completely taking over that space. We are finding significant consumption. So if you look at Sony Live today, we are one of the largest apps which run football. Most of the global football is run on Sony Live. We've got NBA, we've got a fair amount of cricket on it. So we almost have sports running 24-7 live on the app. And the consumption every month tends to surprise us. And we're wondering what people are doing at 2.30 in the night watching football, 1.30 in the night watching football and how many of them are sitting up and watching. So what's happening more and more is that the number of people who are using this as the screen to watch content is going up in multiples. And the time that they're spending on it is significant. And I think we have to thank Geo a lot for it. But in the last 18 odd months, that number is obviously moved up significantly. And because the cost of bandwidth dropping, the phone penetration dropping, we are seeing a huge shift. So television is, most homes in India are single TV homes and a lot of sports takes sometimes, you know, takes the second priority at home. And the mother is watching something and the grandmother is watching something. So you have no hope of, you know, watching your sports. So therefore, now what's happening is a lot of people are pulling out their phone and saying, okay, mom, you see what you want to see. I'm going to see what I want to see. And that's the swing that we're seeing. Since sort of I'll get to Ajay and Vinith in a minute, but just since the thrust of this conversation is about marketing challenges that you face in particular with the sort of new landscape. Can you talk a little bit about that in particular contrast it with the challenges that perhaps and how different that is to the broadcasting landscape where television and how it functions around sport as a marketing activity is different to digital. So I think digital we are finding the whole approach is different. Here it's a personal device. The phone, we're carrying the phones, we're carrying the entertainment device in our pocket. So the experience for the consumer is very different. He's pulling it out and saying, okay, the match is on or I have to see my highlights. I'm going to pull it out when I'm in the train, when I'm in the bus, when I'm late at home, when I'm not allowed to watch television, when I'm doing my preparation for exams, I'm going to sneak and watch what's happening. So a lot of that we are seeing and word of mouth is working. Social media seems to be where we are able to get our consumers. A lot of sampling is happening on social media and then moving on to the apps and a lot of organic downloads and a lot of organic marketing is happening on some of this stuff. And what I'm finding increasingly getting feedback as a journalist since we are producing digital content ourselves is that there's a greater consumption and a greater demand for quick form essential content that you can, that whether it's in the form of actual match clips or whether it's in the form of analysis and things like that. It's a total sort of complete change from the way we were doing television earlier and I mean, it's slightly off topic, but it's one of our learnings. Can you even talk to us about, it's still young in India, isn't it? I mean, this whole scenario, can you talk to us about global practices? What's worked well overseas? What are the things that are sort of learnings that can be imbibed in India? Yeah, sure. So sports overall is quite young in India, you're right. We were one sport nation for quite some time and if you see, first I'll talk about the Indian fact and then we can go to the global learning. So if you look at the trends that cricket has given us, cricket has been a sport in India for over four decades now. And it's a sport which has been truly built bottom up. So whatever we saw post 83, whatever we saw the post broadcast and the digital era was after a very strong base of followers, fans, communities built around that sport. So it was easy for the broadcasters or even the digital platforms to take it to the next level. But what we see with the emerging sporting economy is that most of it has happened from a league's point of view. And now we are finding ways to possibly look at the grassroot and building those sports bottom up. So it's exactly the other way around the new leagues are being built. So therefore what's critical and the learnings that can take from the global sporting economies is predominantly around building communities. Sports builds a lot of communities right from school to colleges. And that's what creates a huge base for it to become a cult. It's interesting, you mentioned leagues and again this comes from sort of personal experience of having been around sport for such a while that this is now the new buzzword, isn't it? Almost leagues and league sport in their prime time, quick, whatever the sport might be. It's the way viewers are increasingly engaging with sport. There's this whole debate about long formats, all of that. What are best practices from your mind that actually there is experience from around the world that I'm assuming marketing people and broadcasters and people in your line of work can pick up. What's your sense? There is already formulas I'm sure that have worked and not worked in countries such as the US, such as the United Kingdom where there is a culture for leagues where there is that probably is the preeminent form of sport. So before the leagues, if you see in US, you look at NBA, it's formed from a community point of view and therefore the league. It's at a school level, it's at a university level, it's at a community level and that's what builds it bottom up. So from a marketing standpoint, if we have to see how can we take those learnings is to build a very strong ecosystem around broadcast which we already have. How the digital ecosystem can help is actually in a lot of ways. So the first thing that comes to my mind is that while we are building sports, we're talking about grass roots and talking about various different ways to play sport, we'll have to build communities at some point in time on the back of football as a sport, cup of tea as a sport, leaving cricket aside. So therefore, now communities can very easily be transferred into fans. India today, we don't have a organized or a structured program which creates communities, which builds communities, loosely put something around fans, fans relationship. So tomorrow, if I have to ask a league owner or a club, who are your fans? Okay, as a media agency or as a marketer of the sports sponsorship agency, what we hear is around Facebook following or Twitter following. That's, you can't really translate that into fans in a mature economy like us today, okay? So we need to possibly see how well are we going to use the digital data points? How are we going to create analytical products around building those communities which can then transfer into fans? And that's how we can build it going forward. Otherwise, it becomes a scenario where it's going to be couple of seasons, couple of months on television and it just goes. Season and off season, there are two things sports need to survive and that has to be on the back of communities, can't be only on the back of marketing. Just to add to that, I think what a very interesting point that he's making here that the communities are automatically being formed on our platforms when consumers are coming to watch particular games. They're following what they're liking, the games that they're coming back again and again. So we at our end are creating DMPs which are capturing the consumer data on saying which game, which consumer is following, what leagues or what sport are they following, what teams are they following. Therefore, when we go back to advertisers, we're able to target sports, we're able to target leagues, we're able to target actual teams and say these teams are the teams that you know, you want to get your ads on and therefore you're able to get target those consumers. So a lot of work is happening at that level on digital, basically what she... Yeah, I mean, in a sense what we're actually seeing more and more is that community is not necessarily a physical presence in a geographical area. You know, there is a community of Indian Real Madrid fans who have never been to Madrid and that in a sense is the new picture of sport that we are seeing. So just the point that I was trying to drive is fans is not only about people watching sport on TV or on a digital platform, the real proof of concept of a fan comes from the number of time he goes to watch a particular sport in a stadium. The kind of money he spends on buying merchandising of his particular sport or a team. For that, you need a completely different backbone which can't be only derived from the viewership data is the point I was trying to try. You know, we've all spoken, but there'd be lots of sport with Sagar if people like Ajay would not put their money into it. So Ajay should now get into this conversation. Just talk to us about what your experience in this area has been in particular. I mean, as a brand, you are a cement brand. You have a choice of association. You could choose today to be associated with film, with other forms of entertainment. What sort of touch point is sport for you and how has it grown in importance? One is? Are we able to hear him clearly in the back? Are you able to hear Ajay clearly in the back? Yeah, go ahead Ajay. So I think we've got to bifurcate two things. Sports evokes a lot of passion, but in our day jobs, we've got to deliver a certain business objective from our businesses and so on. So two, three things I think we've got to segregate. Delivering eyeballs, there's been a huge evolution and who they talked about and we need to talk about. That evolution has been massive in the last 10 years. Personalization, who they talked about. Mom, dad don't want to watch this. I want to watch a specific program, a specific match at a specific hour of the day. Want to watch the goal kick five times. I'm good. I want to see five stats, et cetera. There's been huge evolution. Sports also evokes a lot of passion. Now in that, as a marketer, from our product perspective, we've got to think about within that passionate scenario, when people have gone to a stadium and watched Virat Kohli and come out, per se, do they remember the messaging that I have had there or not? And what's your experience been there? And I think the point is that things haven't evolved there. So while the content delivery has evolved hugely, and we were talking just before that, if you see the last 20 years and pick up sports contracts with advertisers and marketers, just because the eyeballs are large and just because you every time have somebody who wants impact and wants a quick impact, there is somebody to bid. But I think where we are missing the trick is who's footing the bill for the large bids that are being made for these sports and funding the expansion of sports. If it is restricted to a contract being there are 20,000 things that you cannot do. And rather than putting across a message with sports, which can be very powerful, versus that simple name you recall in a stadium or a logo. And that's how many centimeters square is what you're debating with jerseys. If that's the conversation, I don't think both at the sports broadcasters, owners, and marketers we are not moving ahead. And we are not leveraging it without, of course, hurting the fan experience. You've been very candid, Ajay. I mean, the point that you are basically making is that value is something that as a sponsor of sport or as a brand associated with sport is something you are constantly assessing, whether that is delivering the value that you are after. Can you do a, if you were to look at that in comparison to what are, let's say, other Indian indulgences, you know, film or entertainment options of this kind. Do you have that conversation internally a lot? So two things I would put it. And I look at, so while I love sports, the question that you have to at times ask, and if you're not getting the evolution from broadcasters, from right owners towards marketers, at times passion can work against you as a marketer because is the fellow looking at Pete Sampras or Federer or is he looking at the G billboard behind, right? And you've got to be very careful about that entire piece and messaging very often is minuscule in this context. So you've got to be careful and as richly as the evolution has been around this entire context of looking at the fan experience, I think we've got to take a pause and ask who's funding it all and we should be taking care of that customer also. I think you already know what I was going to ask you next. It's all yours. It's a tough trade off. So, you know, his point is right, it's a tough trade off and I think we all walk this thin line all the time as people who are showcasing the sport and balancing the needs of an advertiser who's in a big way funding the sport. And there is no clear answer and I think we'll evolve going forward, different sports are trying different ways of involving the advertiser in it and multiple innovations are happening and we are seeing on football, for example, the boards, billboards are changing based on location, destination. However, most, most federations and sport rights owners are very concerned at the intrusiveness and try and restrict intrusiveness in terms of what an advertiser or a local advertiser can do and I think that's the trade off we need to make. That's the piece on how pure the sport viewing experience should be on a consumer's mobile versus the ad feel of it and ad I'm saying in today's format. And hopefully ad formats going forward on digital would change to accommodate a fine balance between what the sport, to keep the sport pure and to make sure that the advertising message comes through. And I think it's an experimentation from both ends. The advertisers have to be open to try and the agencies have to be open to try and say these are the things that we want to try. There are some innovations that we want to try but there are other stuff that are probably more standard. So I believe, I think the challenge is both sides and really I think given the nature of contracts and clauses and so on and so forth, I don't think there's been so much of an openness hopefully it comes through but I think it's in the interest of the advertisers and marketers also. You don't want to be a disruption, right? You want to be value adding to the fans experience and be part of the story rather than be a interruption to the story. So that challenge, I think it is in our interest itself to be creative enough not to be a disruption and always be part of the story. The strategic timeouts were a good idea I guess. Sorry? The strategic timeouts in the IPR were a good idea. But if you see the scale of the kind of innovations that have happened on the breakthroughs that have happened on the sporting formats themselves and how they are broadcast versus the innovations that have happened purely on from an advertising perspective, I think we are far behind. We're really far behind and I think more needs to be done at both ends. Yeah, we've got about 10 minutes to go. We need to make the, just add on to the points they're making and then some questions from the audience. So I completely agree with Ajay actually and that's exactly the tipping point where we are in today which links to one big issue of rights and entitlements packaging, okay? That itself is quite at a nation stage in India because it doesn't allow you to play too much again because we don't have the kind of strong data points which the sporting community in the West has. Just to give you a very, very small in your face example, outside of cricket, you don't see any core sporting brands supporting Indian sport. Why? Okay, we have ISL going to be coming in in the next two weeks, okay? We have got Kabaddi right now on television, okay? The core sporting brands like Nike or Adidas or Puma, where are they, okay? And why are they not there? It actually answers that question that because somewhere they have a feeling that the core towards sport which is around building communities, building fans and therefore to link back to an advertiser like Ajay, we are not really able to give back things to them which he can really take it to his consumers, to his different channel partners and so on and so forth. So there's massive amount of work that needs to be done at a rights and entitlements point and we need to use data, we need to first collect data in a smart way for the core sporting brands to sort of leverage the sport before we go to the world of advertisers who are going to be pretty much following the consumers that way. Okay, so we are on the backward clock now. Just, I think we'll have time for two or three questions. Whoever does, quickly, yes sir, quick question, introduce yourself and then do that. Actually go ahead, yes please, please. But apart from IPL, none of the sports has made money, so what's your answer to that? Uda, you wanna take that? So, I'll take it, so it's quite early days. So if you look at, it's quite early. So nowhere you can have a business model which possibly yields results in three to four years, okay? So when Kabaddi happened, when ISL happened, we all said that you need to give it a horizon of at least seven to 10 years. And if I have got my estimated numbers right of Kabaddi, I think that is one leak after IPL where the franchises will be profitable if not this year, next year for sure. Are we doing it the right way? I mean, is the first right way? So we get one question each. If I can put the advertisers plea into this, if they've not made money, they've got to be more creative to deliver value to advertisers so that more people come on board. Okay, another question. So anyone else with a question for anyone on the panel? No one? I can auction this. Good old passion. All right, so we'll go with final thoughts. So where do you see things as they stand at the moment and what would you identify as the biggest challenge? Yeah, so, yeah, we all agree that there's great momentum around sport. It drives passion, it builds communities. But I think we need to do a lot of things before we get into the, before we get into being a sporting nation. First of it is we need to put fan or a passionate sports lover at the center. I am not too sure outside of cricket if we have done that. So fan is the hero and fan is the one who's going to be building the sport over time and not the other way around. And as a rights holder, I guess, that's something you're constantly aware of because not only I mentioned the cricket as the big thing, but you're realizing there is a fan ecosystem that exists for various other sport in India and it's something that you have to work at delivering value. So I think we're far more excited about the rest of the stuff also. So it's not just about cricket. We believe that NBA, because of that community and the hardcore followers of NBA, come to us again and again and again. And there's a great community on Sony Live. So just to put it in context, the consumers of sports on digital are now crossing 10% of what they are on broadcast. So if they're crossing for some niche sports, probably even more, but for mainline sports, it might be a little less. But for niche sports, the number can be significant. So if you're talking those kind of numbers, then there are significant communities of those niche followers who are coming on the digital and following the sport on their time, on their device, where I have the ability to personalize advertising and personalize messaging to them at that point in time or at a later point, later stage. So it then opens up for advertisers far more innovation, far more ability to connect with that kind of consumer or that TG. And I think that's an exciting space for us going forward. So we think that there is huge headroom on digital sports. There's a huge headroom on what an advertiser can get through digital sports and what we can do on the mobile for him. But like how I was saying, there's a lot of work which needs to be done to get this. In fact, since we've got a couple of minutes, just can you share about the experience of the under 17 World Cup? It's a unique event. It's happening in India. You are the broadcast partners. What have been your learnings on that event? So actually, it's surpassed all that we thought in terms of, so India came out of that thing very early and our expectation was that if India falls off after the third match or the fourth match, it'll just go away. But it's surprising that even the semifinal matches were viewed by so many, so many people. And the advantage was one, there was a lot of local following happening. Number two, the timings are very friendly for the Indian community. A lot of football in India happens at strange hours and a lot of them consume football on Sony Live. So we knew who the football lovers were. So for us to then call these guys and say, or do a shout out to these guys saying, there is exciting under 17 happening now, was that much easier and we generated huge amount of traffic in the last, whatever, three, four weeks on this. And it's surprising that games where there is no star and the countries where we have no emotional connect with, people are watching those games. Brazil are playing football in India, so that's one connect immediately. Ajay, since you bring in the money, you get the final word. Okay, so I believe, I think while we say the fan, I genuinely believe I think both parties need to be involved with the fan experience. So far, even from broadcaster's perspective, it's a lot about monetization and about holding rights close to chest. I think we've got to ease up a little bit and be slightly more relaxed about, yet come to the conclusion that it's about the fan experience, which both the advertiser as well as they have the interest at heart. And if there is collaboration, creativity from our friends, both at the clients and the agencies, I'm sure this is a fairly large space and you would have even more to fund many more sports in India. Excellent. I think the guy on the right and the guy on the left, both heard you loud and clear. We have a deal now. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much, gentlemen. If I may have on stage Mr. Satyabrata Das, head of strategy, Lakshya Media Group, to please present these gentlemen with a memento. Thank you so much. Mr. Gaurav Kalra, Mr. Ajadang, Mr. Uday Sodhi and Mr. Vineet Karnik.