A cricket fan, like most of his countrymen, Manu Sawhney passionately follows the sport. Right from the historic 1983 World Cup victory in England to the Twenty20 World Cup win last year, Sawhney cherishes all the major achievements of the Indian cricket team, posted over the last two decades and a half. And the relatively new 20-20 format has gone down well with Sawhney who, like the majority of fans, is eagerly awaiting the start of the Champions League T20 in India. “This new format has caught the world by storm and along with my family, who all are into it as much as I am, we are going to cheer for the two Indian teams in the tournament,” says Sawhney. While the tragic events in Mumbai caused the postponement of that particular tournament, the return of the England cricket team to conclude their tour and Test series has done much to buoy confidence that cricket in India will bounce back. “Given the extreme unforeseen circumstances, the Governing Council of the Champions League 2020, after consultations with the three founding board members of the tournament has postponed the inaugural edition of the Champions League 2020, a decision we fully understand, respect and support as we believe that it is in the best interest of all concerned,” said an ESS spokesperson. “It is too early to comment now about the next phase, which we are sure will eventually be appropriately decided upon by the Champions League 2020 governing body. As the global commercial partner of the Champions League 2020, we remain committed to launch and build this unique property as a marquee event in the international cricket calendar and we will be working very closely with the Champions League Twenty20 administration to develop the way forward.” For, as Managing Director of ESPN STAR Sports, Sawhney’s interest in cricket extends way beyond being an avid fan; the sport forms the core of ESS’s business in Asia. “Today, we are the biggest investor in the game of cricket, with global telecast and production rights for the ICC, Cricket Australia, England and Wales Cricket Board, and the most recent Champions League Twenty20. This has further solidified our leadership position in the region,” he says. In addition to its strong traditional revenue model which continues to show robust growth, according to ESS, the broadcaster has been working diligently to develop new avenues for business growth that could supplement its core streams of revenues. “We have very successfully realized potential in areas like global syndication, production services, new media, events and buy-ons,” said Sawhney. The deal for the Champions League T20, for which ESS reportedly paid US$975 million for the 10-year global rights for the tournament, exemplifies this. “In terms of rights, the Champions League T20 is one of the rare opportunities where one gets to acquire all commercial rights globally for a driver property. This, therefore allows us multitude of opportunities to build it, develop it, customise it and fully realise immense business value around it,” points out Sawhney. The rights around CL T20 include TV, Internet, audio, mobile, title sponsorship, umpire sponsorship, stadium advertising, official sponsor, ticketing, licensing (merchandising) and international syndication. “These factors thus make CLT 20 most unique and premium as compared to any other domestic or international property currently around,” he said. “With our three strong TV brands – ESPN, STAR Sports & STAR Cricket, two robust mobile brands – mobileESPN and STAR Sports Mobile and a comprehensive multilingual online offering in form of www.espnstar.com, www.espnstar.cn & www.espnstar.tw, we are better placed than ever today to fully leverage our cricket rights and exploit multiple opportunities across platforms in the region and globally for revenue generation thus continuing to build our business.” Interest in the 20:20 format has increased dramatically in the last year or so. September 2007 saw ESS air the T20 World Cup. While the inaugural Indian Premier League (IPL), held in April 2008, witnessed a spiraling effect in acquisition costs. Sony Max together with World Sport is to pay $1.026 billion for the 10-year global media and production rights to the IPL. Sawhney considers the ESS-hosted T20 World Cup a turning point in the way commercialization of this sport has reached an unprecedented level. “The Twenty20 format is an exciting form of cricket that has changed the way this game is consumed across the globe. We recognized that Twenty20 would have a large impact on the game, when we acquired the global production and broadcast rights for the ICC which included multiple world tournaments of this new format of the game,” said Sawhney, adding that success came across ratings where ICC World T20 broke all viewership records, cutting across all genres of programmes and even getting the highest female audience for any programme; as well as distribution and international syndication where the event was shown in more than 110 countries across platforms. “I believe that this format of the game will further broaden the appeal of the game across new markets and demographics – thus providing increasing number of platforms for leverage and exploitation,” he said. Considering the recent acquisitions, it might seem too much focus of ESS is on South Asia especially India. But Sawhney says each market plays an important role. “While the growth for our business comes from three geographical regions, broadly classified based on the needs of sports fans – South Asia, South East Asia and North Asia – each market plays an important role there are definitely certain markets which due to their nature in terms of size and potential contribute more and thus become more important for us,” he said, even as he agreed that ESS has the most comprehensive and definitive programming line-up in India in cricket and football. “In addition, South East Asia and North Asia continue to contribute to the growth of our business and form core markets for our overall business in Asia and today, we have the most complete line-up of compelling content for these regions in form of BPL, The FA Cup, UCL in key markets, AFC in football; F1, A1, MotoGP and WRC in motor-racing, key tennis Grand Slams, major golf properties including The US Open, The Open, Augusta Masters among others and other international properties like the NBA, MLB etc,” he said. “Our strategy is to build a sustainable and scalable business across sports, platforms and markets by serving the fan and, our programming and acquisition strategy reflects our commitment to continue to be a leader in these regions.” Reflecting on his one-year tenure as MD, in a previous interview with Television Asia Plus, the company had indicated that new channels dedicated to individual sports, and digital media, were just two of ESPN STAR Sports’ (ESS) emphases for this year. Commenting on significant changes or transformation about ESS business as he completed his first year as MD, Sawhney referred to the fact it was his endeavour to reinforce “ESS’s position as Asia’s No. 1 sports broadcaster and content provider on the back of four key pillars.” These were as follows: Developing the strongest, most comprehensive and relevant content line-up across different markets. Other than cricket, ESS has strong-line up in soccer (the exclusive rights to show over 275 international football games including the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Confederations Cup; a multi-year exclusive agreement with The Football Association (The FA), for broadcast rights to The FA Cup, England Internationals and The FA Community Shield on multimedia platforms for the 2008/9 – 2011/12 seasons for 20 countries across the region; existing partnership with Premier League with which ESS holds BPL rights for 22 countries in Asia through 2010 and rights of UEFA Champions League across Asia); motorsports (ESS recently renewed its partnership with FIA for another five years across the region and for the first time, it has secured rights across various platforms and in many key markets it has acquired terrestrial rights as well. In addition to this, it has other properties like A1, MotoGP and WRC); Olympics (rights for the Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 Olympic Games for 22 countries across the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia. This is the first time that IOC has awarded the rights to one single pay TV platform across this the region); plus host of other major events such as partnership with tennis Australia for another seven years, the French Open for India, renewal of ATP Masters relationship, the NBA and key golf majors including Augusta Masters, The US Open & The Open among others. Equipping our organisation with best technology that sets a platform for us to further expand our business. “We undertook Project Homerun to meet our unique and complex broadcast production demands as well as the challenges of localising the content coping with sports rights issues,” shared Sawhney. “In addition, with another significant project in form of IBMS which is a new business management system, we have now successfully integrated between our internal systems across functions to provide competitive advantage and smoother operations. This called for an extensive business re-engineering and system and has resulted in greater cost-efficiencies.” “I strongly believe that human capital is the biggest strength of any organisation. I continue to work towards building a culture that is driven by collaborative thinking and working which creates a level of accountability but also a significant amount of empowerment to people which means letting them know that they are responsible but then giving them room to operate. Therefore, I have worked towards creating project teams within the organization spanning across departments and markets entrusted with an objective to scout for new ideas to help grow our business as well as ideas to improve efficiencies in our current work processes.” Performance of acquisitions and digital media developments According to Sawhney, Singapore’s appetite for watching the F1 on television has shown definite signs of growth with bolstered ratings for the 2008 F1 season live races on ESPN STAR Sports trending much higher as compared to last year. This is not only limited to the viewership of the Singapore GP but the entire season. “The highest increase in the television ratings for F1 live races comes from the men in the age group of 35-44 where it has increased by 127 percent. The sport is also becoming more popular among the younger age group of men showing a higher trend of approximately 20 percent,” he said. One interesting fact revealed by the research came in form of the bolstered TV ratings for female viewership for live races, which showed a very positive and robust upward trend of 26 percent for women aged 15 and above, reaffirming the increasing popularity of the sport across demographics. He added, “Our focus on our new media initiatives has marked several milestones that have established ESS as a top sports content provider in Asia. On www.espnstar.com, last August 08 when compared to last year showed an increase of over 41 percent in page impressions. In addition there have been many more significant results. There have been 1.25m video plays since launch of the Media Player – it’s the first time video has been produced for online distribution only. Our Fantasy Football Game – NFC Manager – has attracted more number of team sign ups since its launch eight weeks ago as compared to all of the 2007/08 season. The average time spent on the site for each visit has increased by almost a minute since launch.” ESS has also signed up nine mobile partners in four territories to distribute STAR Sports Mobile. On plans moving forward, Sawhney said, “We have been able to build a sustainable and scalable business based on a strong foundation and will continue to invest in maintaining content leadership, leveraging on the strong equity of our brands with the audience, and expanding our business across markets, sports and platforms. Along with this, we will continue to be aggressive in actively pursuing and developing business opportunities. This includes continuing our new media initiatives to fully extend and take advantage of opportunities available across multiple platforms including television, mobile, online and other media.” “While we have been able to retain and leverage our pan-regional scale, our growth is a testimony to our focus on individual markets, as we continue to build and grow various markets across the region with our localised programming line-up and viewer-centric approach and we are committed to further exploit the same by leveraging our brand equity for the benefits of our business partners and audiences.” TVAplus