Mobile handset makers to pay Sony around 20% of IPL ad revenue

This IPL season is going to belong to mobile handset makers, who will hog the most airtime during the matches on official broadcaster Sony. Mobile brands like Oppo, Vivo, Lava, Micromax and LYF are not only going to advertise a lot during the T20 league matches, but are also sponsors of six out of the eight playing teams. Other than this, another brand Intex also owns a team.

Oppo has signed up as the presenting sponsor this year, which means that it would take 240 seconds per match, the highest ever time slot in the IPL. Similarly, the other two presenting sponsors -Vodafone and Amazon - have taken 210 seconds per match.

Like this year’s mobile brands, the last season of the IPL belonged to the ecommerce majors like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, CarDekho, Car-Trade, Paytm, Shopclues and Myntra, who brought around 23% of the total ad revenues for the broadcaster.

"This year, the handset category is making up around 20% of our advertising revenues, the highest among all categories," says Rohit Gupta, president of Sony Pictures Networks.

The reason why smartphone makers have overtook e-commerce companies is that the losses of some of the leading ecommerce players grew significantly over the past one year, forcing most of them to cut down on advertising costs.

As per media planners, this IPL would give Sony around Rs 1,200 crore from sponsorship and advertising, as compared to just under Rs 1,000 crore in the last season of IPL.

Image source