Sports broadcasting industry to grow by 15-20 percent this year

Kolkata: Depending on the higher number of sports events in 2016, the overall sports broadcasting industry in India is likely to grow by 15-20 percent over the last year, industry sources have said.

"The growth of the market for sports broadcasting varies depending on the number sports events in a particular year. Higher number of events in a year is expected to push up market growth figure for the particular year. We cannot have a steady trend of growth year-on-year basis," Sony Pictures Networks India's executive vice president and business head, Sports cluster, Prasana Krishnan said on Thursday.

"Since the year 2016 had already T20 cricket World Cup and will have UEFA EURO 2016, this year will be a bigger one. The overall sports broadcasting market in India is expected to grow 15-20 percent in 2016 over the last calendar year," he said.

"There is a buoyant market condition as advertising spend is good. The market is growing well."

According to him, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has the most pan-India appeal while several other sporting leagues in India like kabaddi, hockey, football, badminton and tennis and so on are also helping region base markets to grow.

Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) also eyes 15-20 revenue growth this year, he said.

"As the exclusive television broadcaster of VIVO IPL, we are committed to taking on initiatives to increase the viewership of the game and continued our pioneering initiative of multi-language feeds in Tamil, Telugu and Bengali available across markets in addition to Hindi and English," Krishnan added.

IPL attracted 30-35 percent of all sports viewership in the country. In the last edition of IPL, the viewership grew 21 percent over its previous edition, Krishnan informed.