World Cup 2003 - Epilogue

The excitement of World Cup 2003 has finally died out. The team has been welcomed back with open arms (despite our final surprising performance against Australia). And, TAM has finally released the much awaited data for the last week of the tournament!

As reminded again and again, this has been the best World Cup for India in 20 years. The following analysis looks at just how good the 'best performance' has been for the advertising community. The objectives of the exercise were to,

1) Evaluate the performance of the entire series

• how did it perform?
• how did it affect other programming?
• how did it compare with World Cup 99?

• six weeks prior to tournament
• six weeks during tournament

• 15-34 yr., SEC AB, Male/Female, C&S HHs

• TAM for W.C. 03, INTAM for W. C. 99
• Time Monitoring for non-TVC presence

Set Max dominated the World Cup viewers even in the total television viewer universe (C&S and non-C&S). The following analysis has therefore been focussed more on Set Max & Sony.

While the number of brands had remained constant between World Cup 99 & World Cup 03, total spends had doubled. In both cases the reach of all the World Cup matches, was almost double that of an equivalent number of episodes of the top (3-8) programs of the time. The reach of World Cup 2003 was marginally better than that of World Cup 1999.

Comparison of the TVRs at all stages, showed that the performances of both the Cups were similar till the League & Super Six levels. W. Cup 03 has outperformed W. Cup 99 from the Semi Final level onwards, (on account of the Indian team!!)

Spends on this World Cup have been much higher than those on World Cup'99. On an average brands were operating around a CPRP/10s of Rs 23000/-. Some brands had done better, this being more a factor of where their spots had appeared. Some brands like LG CDMA launched their TV presence with the World Cup. They may not have gone onto the medium, atleast at these levels, had not this event been there.

Among all the brands active on W.C. 03, there was almost a 50:50 divide between the <1cr and >1cr brands. Mid budget (3-6 cr.) brands would have had a significant share of presence. 1 cr. was the basic threshold spend required for this Cup.

Comparing spends of W.Cup '99 & '03, we saw that, the spend slab compositions remain similar across the two tournaments, but, the value of the slabs, had virtually doubled (in consonance with the doubling of overall spends). The number of brands in the sub-optimal level had dropped by 10%. The top 2 brands dominating the tournament were far ahead of the others in '03. The mid-spend segment (1-6 cr. in '03, 05-1.5 cr. in '99) had almost doubled in '03 => probably one of the key factors of the high overall spends in the tournament.

Set Max remained the clear leader (more and better matches compared to Sony) throughout the tournament. Sony TV and DD1 garnered similar time spent by audience despite DD having a better line up. Brands who were only on DD, did have some mileage in C&S homes. Impact of 'Taking Guard', 'Follow Through' on Star Sports & other match repeat telecasts on ESPN/Star Sports remained negligible.

Viewership came into form, from the Ind/Eng match. Only two non-India matches could compare with India matches. Quite a few other non-India matches managed TVRs around 5.

Although most matches were day matches on weekdays, the 1st half performed as well as the second half and showed greater consistency in reach. The matches had peaked however in last 10 overs of the 2nd half except in one-sided match endings (more people tuning in to catch the match outcome ?) Quite a few matches ended before the scheduled 50 overs of the 2nd half. Matches beginning at 1800 hrs had low reach levels towards the end. Despite the team's performance in the finals, all Indians continued to hope against hope till the very end - as is evident from the fact that the final match was the best one on all parameters!

Most of the viewers watched most of the matches, instead of tuning in occasionally. Comparison of the match reach calculated with reach definitions of 1 min+ and 15 (consecutive) min+ showed that there were only around 10 % casual viewers for India matches and around 20% casual viewers for the non-India matches.

Non-cricket programming normally shows atleast a 20% drop in viewership from the program to the commercial break. In case of the World Cup the corresponding drop was only around 2 - 5% for all the matches, except the non-India Super Six matches where the drop was around 7%.

Matches on Setmax had taken the top slots during the World Cup. However, there was no drop in Star Plus top program ratings. Zee & Sony were affected.

The sports genre share had gone up to the levels of the mass genre. The share had primarily come from Star / Zee / Sony, News & Hindi Movies.

Non-cricket advertisers can continue to breathe easy. The absolute viewership of different genres (quantified by Timespent = Reach in 000's x Average Hours per Viewer) remained almost untouched. . The sports genre channel share increased because, they increased the total time-spent on TV and attracted the entire increase (around 27%) to themselves.

The increase in total time-spent of 27% may seem small when compared to the % increase shown by W. Cup '99 . . . Absolute time-spent went up by 59% during '99.

=> During W.Cup '99 absolute time-spent went up by 7985
=> During W.Cup '03 absolute time-spent went up by 16924

# Market rate for WC 03 was Rs 120000/- against that of Rs 80000/- for WC 99 : 50% rate hike
# The difference in absolute time-spent is 112% (higher for WC 03)

Hike in rates justified?

The increase in total time-spent restricted to World Cups as seen from the ICC 2002 performance . . . There was no increase in absolute time-spent.

5 brands joined the top 20 brands on account of strong non-TVC presence, i.e. pull throughs, replays & in-stadium presence. Instadia presence was calculated only for the Semi's and the Finals by Time Monitoring. This has been extrapolated to the balance 46 matches. There were a total of 53056 secs of Pullthroughs on all matches and a total of 125956 secs of Replay time on all matches.

The non-TVC presence on Set Max and Sony was added onto the brands spends on the same channels during the Cup. Rexona, LG Electronics and Airtel presence on Set Max / Sony was only through non-TVC presence. Only 30% of the combined non-TVC presence taken, as this was primarily logo recall.

The top brands were then re-arranged basis their combined presence on the matches through TVC & discounted non-TVC commercial time. The results were interesting. LG Electronics became 3rd in presence despite its absence from Set Max / Sony. BSNL, became 2nd in presence despite being 17th in commercial spot presence.

And, a brief look at the DD telecast . . .

There was a total spend of Rs 103 crores on DD1 across 80 brands. Like in C&S, a few brands dominated. Brands with spends between 1-3 cr. would have had very good presence. Although the total spend on DD was less than half that on Set Max/Sony, the clutter on DD was higher. Rs 103 crs was spent on 16 matches - per match spend average of Rs 6.4 crs, whereas, Rs 239 crs was spent on Set Max/Sony on 54 matches - per match spend average of Rs 4.4 crs. The average CPRP on DD1 was Rs 7600/- per 10 secs, (much lower than the C&S CPRP).

The ratings were similar to those of Set Max in C&S homes. Ideally they should have been higher on account of low fragmentation in non-C&S. The TVRs were similar across different stages (since DD had the best matches), with the finals at an all time high non-C&S TVR.

The audience movement was similar to that in the C&S channels in C&S homes

1) Penetration of C&S will go up even further and therefore we would expect the role of DD to be further marginalized.

2) Channel with better matches will outperform others.

3) Spend levels in W.Cup '07 expected to be higher than levels in W.Cup '03 Number of brands may go down, but probably not significantly. Rationalisation of brands will see more and more brands operating at optimum levels and above, with a handful of brands as usual dominating the show.


4) The overall reach of the Cup should be above 75% of the audience. This figure may go up depending on the Indian teams performance.

5) The reach of equivalent non-cricket top programs will remain lower than that of the Cup matches, but significant still.

6) India matches will continue to dominate the event, however, critical non-India matches and strong team combination non-India matches will perform well.

7) The safest section of the match will be the 20 overs before and after the lunch break. In close matches, however, the best part in terms of viewership, will be the final 10 overs.

8) Most of the audience of the matches for both India and non-India will view most of the match and will not surf out during the commercial breaks.

9) The top 5-7 programs will remain untouched (assuming that there will be a 'star' channel like Star Plus), however, India matches will make a grand entry into the top charts.

10) Channel shares of non-cricket genres will give way to cricket. However, this will be on account of absolute viewership increasing on account of cricket only. This unprecedented increase is restricted to World Cups only and leading brands with significant budgets should cash in on this. However, they should expect significant returns either on sales or brand image terms.

11) The role of non-TVC presence is significant and can be used very effectively to dominate the viewers share of mind.

One last thought,

• The performance of a World Cup, varies with the Indian team making it to the various stages through the Cup
• Currently, buyers buy all stages at the same rate
• if India proceeds, the buyer benefits
• if not, he loses (the opposite applies to the seller)
• It may be possible to project the media performance of the various stages with or without the Indian team.

• this can be used for setting different budget slabs (only league, league+SS. . . all stages)
• Larger spenders will work on economies of scale, hence probably have a common rate across stages (but lower than market rate)
• The smaller spenders may go in for slabs (increasing outlay deals)
• the spenders presence on all matches will thus be justified in case of non-India scenario
• the buyer will be able to do a better inventory management while getting a better rate in case of an India scenario

The Indian cricket viewers have come back to the realities of the normal world. The media planners were holding on for just a few more weeks (read the lag period in getting viewership data). It is time for them too, to rest a bit more in peace until . . . 2007.

For further information mail to:sanchayeeta.bhattacharya@lowemail.com

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