Kanungo, Director – Brand and Marketing Strategy, Games24x7, spoke about ramping up spends, utilizing inventories to put across the right communication this IPL and cutting through the clutter

The fantasy gaming sector in India has witnessed quite an uptick in the last few years. Case in point being the Indian Premier League. While the sporting extravaganza was earlier dominated by telcos and handset makers, it is the gaming category this year that is pumping in huge sums of money. One of the players from the category that seems bullish on the property has to be My11 Circle, the fantasy sports platform of leading online gaming company Games24x7. From rolling out multiple commercials starring Indian cricket captain and its brand ambassador Sourav Ganguly to creating impressive digital experiences, the brand has been betting big on IPL 2020. In conversation with exchange4media, Avik Das Kanungo, Director – Brand and Marketing Strategy, Games24x7 speaks about ramping up spends, utilizing inventories to put across the right communication to the cricket-loving audiences and cutting through the clutter. The brand objective this IPL, said Kanungo, is to reachout to more and more cricket enthusiasts and tell them about their 'Play with Champions' proposition. “Cricket by far remains the highest participated sports format in the fantasy sports segment in India. To reach out to the relevant cricket-loving audience in the country, IPL comes out as the strongest event simply because of the viewership and interest it generates over 60 days,” he remarked. Speaking about marketing spends on the property, he said, “Our marketing spend has gone up 2000%+. as compared to IPL 2019.” Moreover, the brand has been running extensive brand campaigns across digital platforms. It released a new campaign featuring former Indian cricket captain and brand ambassador Mr Sourav Ganguly. Conceptualised by marketing consulting firm Spring Marketing Capital, the ad films asks cricket enthusiasts to make their teams on the app to compete directly with Mr Ganguly. Kanungo asserted that product innovation and superior game playing experiences have been the cornerstone of the brand’s success in transaction-based skill games. “We would leverage our expertise and deep understanding of the customer behaviour developed over a decade to sharpen our differentiation and gain market share in fantasy sports. We have demonstrated that by offering an innovative "Play with Champions" format, we were able to gain traction within a short period of time rapidly,” he explained. While IPL 2020 has a huge list of advertisers with quite a few other fantasy gaming players advertising, when asked how the brand is ensuring that it breaks through this clutter, Kanungo asserted, “We thrive on a unique product differentiation of 'Play with Champions' through which fantasy players can participate on our app and compete with the legends of cricket like Mr Ganguly, Shane Watson and Rashid Khan. We have attempted to creatively put across this unique proposition to the audience through our latest campaign. The campaign featuring Mr Ganguly and fans is a very well thought through narrative to perfectly place our core product differentiation, and that is what we feel will help us break the clutter and get good brand awareness and recall. “