With the 16th edition of the Indian Premier League swaying audiences across the board, brands have been in the forefront to make the most of this sporting spectacle. Not far behind have been radio players who have become a key advertising medium for most categories. From collaborations with franchises to churning out creative content for the season, radio has been playing all the right tunes.
Association with IPL teams
According to Nisha Narayanan, COO, Red FM, the IPL season is an integral part of the programming calendar as listeners like to be engaged with content around the league. “We have an existing collaboration with Sunrisers Hyderabad - a Sun group-promoted team that we partnered with every year. The association between Red FM and the orange army has been very fruitful and is an incredible partnership of 12 long years.”
As for Monalisa Mandal, AVP, Marketing & Digital, Fever FM, the franchise associations have paid off well. “We take pride in being a significant contributor to the league's success and have partnered with Delhi Capitals, Kolkata Knight Riders, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Chennai Super Kings, and Mumbai Indians for the last decade. This year, we have added Gujarat Titans to our kitty. Moreover, our association with multiple teams stands us out during the IPL season.”
Big FM too has partnered with Rajasthan Royals and Punjab Kings. Abraham Thomas, CEO, of Reliance Broadcast Network, said, “We have done a lot of work with the stars of these teams.”
Sharing more on Radio City’s associations, CEO Ashit Kukian says, “Radio City's collaboration with Lucknow Super Giants is a strategic move to tap into the potential of the booming sports market and drive further growth in the radio business. Such associations allow Radio City to attract more advertisers who aim to attract a larger chunk of the audience during the season, thereby increasing the radio station's advertising revenue.”
Radio partnerships with cricket teams have become innovative and the attempt is to move beyond just branding and create immersive experiences for the listeners, Kukian explained. “The cricket updates provide an exciting experience to listeners as it builds an interaction with the radio station, allowing them to participate in contests such as predicting scores and predicting match winners. This, in turn, has increased engagement and made radio advertising more attractive to advertisers.”
Profits from tier markets
Radio may not have the visual appeal unlike TV and digital but is still a prominent medium of investment for brands. Partnership with IPL teams makes this pull stronger for radio and to achieve a greater reach radio players are going in for custom campaigns and in regional languages.
“As these matches take place in multiple cities, custom campaigns are created in regional languages to help brands acquire local connections. Brands that may not have the resources to go national also come on board and beat the limitations of distribution and ad wastage,” Narayanan pointed out.
Challenges any?
“The biggest challenge is the official accreditation like any other press for sports coverage and lack of clarity on the audio coverage of match moments. Live broadcasting is one of the most essential parts of the FM industry, and the inability to broadcast live is the biggest letdown,” Narayanan said.
“If we were permitted to broadcast live commentary, we could have brought sports to every corner of the country and made significant contributions and earnings, as they are two sides of the same coin.”
Kukian, however, believes radio as a medium offers unique advantages that cannot be replicated by television or digital media as it provides extensive and immersive coverage of matches, thereby activating the theatre of mind experience of the listeners.
Getting creative
IPL campaigns on the radio have stood out because of their creative and vivid style. “We bring our audience interesting content with campaigns like ‘Crowd Bajayega Loud’. It is an all-encompassing campaign with several cricket-related capsules on-air and on-digital,” said Narayanan.
Getting cricketing stars on board also draws audience. Sharing more on that, Kukian said, “Radio City has launched a new edition of its cricketing show ‘Cricket ka Blockbuster’ by on-boarding cricketer Suresh Raina as its official host for this season.”
Some players have ventured into the gaming arena too. Abraham says, “With My Gaming turning into a huge creative category, Big FM has launched Big Bingo Cricket this season.”
Sharing Fever FM’s campaigns, Monalisa said, “We have already launched our digital campaigns, which are tailored for each of our partner teams. For Delhi Capitals, we have "Har Ghar Killa Kotla", “Yeh Hai Nayi Delhi”, and "Junior DC". For Gujarat Titans, we have the "Avaa Dey" campaign; for KKR it is “Dil Kahe Baar Baar Ami KKR”.
