Giving wings to cricket viewing and expanding the horizon of sports marketing is Doordarshan (DD)’s innings as the official broadcast partner for the upcoming India tour of the West Indies.

Calling it the largest-ever telecast for an India bilateral series on a free-to-air channel,

DD on Wednesday announced that it would telecast the matches on six network channels in six different languages. The matches will be broadcast on DD Sports, DD Podhigai, DD Saptagiri, DD Yadagiri, DD Bangla and DD Chandana.

"This is the first time that DD is doing a regional telecast for a cricket match," said Deepak Jaswani, Co-founder of Samskaara Entertainment, which is exclusively responsible for selling ad spots for the month-long tournament across the DD network.

For 10-second ad spots, the public broadcaster is charging Rs 4.50 lakh for T20s, Rs 3.50 lakh for ODIs and Rs 1.50 lakh for Test matches, Jaswani confirmed to exchange4media.

Jaswani also stated that the agency was still in talks with marketers. He said there were some advertisers who are regulars with DD. Samskaara has been getting inquiries from brands about the ad packages and if they could buy spots selectively for ODIs and T20 matches.

The regional feeds have been bundled into a single package, Jaswani shared. “It doesn't make sense to sell regional feed separately because one of the highlights that we are going back to the brands with is the depth of the distribution. And if you add both the national and regional feed on DD Sports and Free Dish, the kind of viewers you can expect to reach is far higher than any cable and satellite channel can ever hope to do. The reason you telecast in different languages is to get the depth of distribution, and national brands need that depth,” Jaswani noted.

DD’s massive network will give viewers the choice to watch the games in their own language. The T20Is and ODI series will be telecast in Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Bangla and Kannada on DD Sports along with the network’s regional channels DD Podhigai, DD Saptagiri, DD Yadagiri, DD Bangla and DD Chandana. Test matches will be telecast on DD Sports. The primary telecast on DD Sports will be a combination of Hindi and English. The aggregate reach of all the channels telecasting the series is over 160 million.

According to Jigar Rambhia, COO at Sporjo, this is an opportunity for brands to advertise as there are no clashes with other cricket events this time. “Also, T20 and ODI matches will be telecast around 7pm, which is prime time and many brands would like to go for it,” he pointed out.

However, sounding a word of caution, Rakshit Jain, Director, Prachar, said the markets were currently very sluggish and due to the monsoons not many advertisers were active. “With West Indies being knocked out of the World Cup, a lot of advertisers have already lost interest in the series. But with the main Indian Team playing, we should have the usual cricket advertisers.”

Samskaara has also bagged reselling rights from Fancode for the matches that will be shown exclusively on Doordarshan.

As the primary media rights holder, FanCode will stream the entire series on its digital platform. The match will also be aired on Jio Cinema.

Jain further said, “The premium audience that watches cricket will watch the games majorly on Jio and Fancode. Due to the success of IPL on Jio, a majority of cricket viewers have the app downloaded on the phone and CTV.”

Fancode had bagged exclusive broadcast rights for the India tour of the West Indies in 2022 too.

The month-long bilateral series has 2 Tests, 3 ODIs, and 5 T20Is, and is scheduled to take place from July 12 to August 13.