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<ul><li>Subhash Chandra announced the resignation from his position at a company board meeting organised on November 25. He will continue as non-executive director of the company. </li><li>ZEE was launched back in 1992 by Chandra and he has continued playing a key role in its journey. </li><li>The Board committee also appointed three new independent directors Sunil Sharma, Niharika Vora and Subodh Kumar.</li></ul>Subhash Chandra, the Founder and Chairman of Zee Entertainment Limited, has resigned from his position. The resignation was announced during a company board meeting organised on November 25. The board accepted his resignation but insisted him to continue being the company's non-executive director. Chandra founded the company back in 1992. Chandra’s resignation comes after a few major global investors bought 16.5% stake in Essel Group’s ZEEL. The discussion was taken in order to repay loan obligations to certain lenders of the Group. Earlier this year, Essel Group had also sold 11% in Zee Entertainment to Invesco Oppenheimer Developing Markets Fund for ₹4,224 crore. Subhash Chandra’s son, Punit Goenka, will continue being the CEO and MD of ZEEL.

Subhash Chandra quits as Chairman of ZEEL

<ul><li><keyword id="3441386" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sony-pictures-networks-india-private-limited" source="Orion">Sony Pictures Networks India Private Limited</keyword> (SPNI) and Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd have entered a definitive agreement to merge ZEEL with and into SPNI and combine their linear networks, digital assets, production operations and program libraries.</li><li><keyword id="599253" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="punit-goenka" source="Orion">Punit Goenka</keyword> will lead the combined company as its Managing Director &amp; CEO. </li><li>The majority of the board of directors of the combined company will be nominated by the Sony Group and will include the current SPNI Managing Director and CEO, NP Singh.</li></ul>Sony Pictures Networks India Private Limited (SPNI) and <keyword id="381258" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="zee-entertainment-enterprises-ltd-" source="Orion">Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd.</keyword> (ZEEL) today announced that they have signed definitive agreements to merge ZEEL with and into SPNI and combine their linear networks, digital assets, production operations and program libraries. The agreements follow the conclusion of an exclusive negotiation period during which ZEEL and SPNI conducted mutual due diligence. After closing, the new combined company will be publicly listed in India. The closing of the transaction is subject to certain customary closing conditions, including regulatory, shareholder, and third-party approvals. Under the terms of the definitive agreements, SPNI will have cash balance of USD $1.5 Bn (assuming an INR:USD exchange rate of 75:1) at closing, including through infusion by the current shareholders of SPNI and the promoters (founders) of ZEEL, to enable the combined company to drive sharper content creation across platforms, strengthen its footprint in the rapidly evolving digital ecosystem, bid for media rights in the fast-growing sports landscape and pursue other growth opportunities. SPNI is an indirect subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (SPE). Under the transactions contemplated by a non-compete agreement, SPE, through a subsidiary, will pay a non-compete fee to certain promoters (founders) of ZEEL, which will be used by such promoters (founders) to infuse primary equity capital into SPNI, entitling the promoters (founders) of ZEEL to acquire shares of SPNI, which would eventually equal approximately 2.11% of the shares of the combined company on a post-closing basis. After the closing, SPE will indirectly hold a majority 50.86% of the combined company, the promoters (founders) of ZEEL will hold 3.99%, and the other ZEEL shareholders will hold a 45.15% stake. Punit Goenka will lead the combined company as its Managing Director &amp; CEO. The majority of the board of directors of the combined company will be nominated by the Sony Group and will include the current SPNI Managing Director and CEO, NP Singh. On closing, Singh will assume a broader executive position at SPE as Chairman, <keyword id="833633" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sony-pictures-india" source="Orion">Sony Pictures India</keyword> (a division of SPE) reporting to Mr. <keyword id="212528" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="ravi-ahuja" source="Orion">Ravi Ahuja</keyword>, SPE’s Chairman of Global Television Studios and SPE Corporate Development. The combination of ZEEL and SPNI is expected to achieve business synergies and given their relative strengths in scripted, factual and sports programming, respective distribution footprints across India and iconic entertainment brands, the combined company should be well-positioned to meet the growing consumer demand for premium content across entertainment touchpoints and platforms. The seamless blend of rich expertise in content creation, deep consumer insights and success across entertainment genres is expected to drive the combined company’s ability to accrue higher shareholder value. Under the stewardship of the Sony Group, a global leader in consumer technologies, gaming and entertainment, the combined company is expected to be able to better compete with the world’s largest streaming players. As part of the definitive agreements, the promoters (founders) of ZEEL have agreed to limit the equity that they may own in the combined company to 20% of its outstanding shares. This construct does not provide the promoters (founders) of ZEEL any pre-emptive or other rights to acquire equity of the combined company from the Sony Group, the combined company or any other party. Any shares purchased by the promoters (founders) of ZEEL, must be in compliance with all applicable laws including any pricing guidelines. Commenting on this development, Punit Goenka, MD &amp; CEO, ZEE Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. said, “It is a significant milestone for all of us, as two leading media &amp; entertainment companies join hands to drive the next era of entertainment filled with immense opportunities. The combined company will create a comprehensive entertainment business, enabling us to serve our consumers with wider content choices across platforms. I am immensely grateful to the teams at ZEEL, SPE and SPNI for their efforts, that swiftly led us to this point within the stipulated timelines. This <keyword id="42411" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="merger" source="Orion">merger</keyword> presents a significant opportunity to jointly take the businesses to the next level and drive substantial growth in the global arena. I look forward to working with the guidance of the esteemed members of the combined company’s board to unlock the potential of this merger, and I wish <keyword id="1436102" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="n-p-singh" source="Orion">N.P. Singh</keyword> all the best in his new role at SPE. His contribution to the Indian media &amp; entertainment industry has been invaluable. I am most certain that our collective wisdom, rich experience and expertise will lead to a more value accretive and exciting company for our shareholders and employees, and a more engaging one for our customers and partners.” “Today marks an important step in our efforts to bring together some of the strongest leadership teams, content creators, and film libraries in the media business to create extraordinary entertainment and value for Indian consumers,” said Ravi Ahuja, SPE’s Chairman of Global Television Studios and SPE Corporate Development. “I want to thank Punit and his team at ZEEL and the small army of people at SPE and SPNI who have worked so hard to get us to this point. I especially want to thank NP Singh, who presented us with the idea to explore this merger well over a year ago. N.P. has done extraordinary work building SPNI to what it is today, and we look forward to continuing our work with him in his new role after closing.” MD &amp; CEO, SPNI, N.P. Singh, added, “This merger will create a company that’s best in class and will redefine the contours of the media and entertainment industry. As a representative of SPE on the Board of the new merged company, it will be my endeavour to provide strategic guidance and support to the company’s operating team in achieving our vision. I am also excited at the opportunity of being appointed, Chairman, Sony Pictures India, to oversee SPE’s investments and craft a wider footprint for Sony in India.” SPE was advised on this transaction by Morgan Stanley, KPMG Corporate Finance, and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas &amp; Co. ZEEL was advised by KPMG, JP Morgan, Trilegal and Boston Consulting Group.

Sony and Zee Entertainment sign definitive agreements to merge, Punit Goenka to lead combined company as MD & CEO

Mumbai, Mar 16 () The Essel Group on Monday said all the credit facilities availed by the group from the crippled Yes Bank are fully secured and that only the infra arm has taken the debt from the bank.The group in a statement also confirmed the Enforcement Directorate summon for group founder Subhash Chandra on March 18.The statement further claimed that "the Zee group has never made any transactions with Rana Kapoor (Yes Bank co-founder and the past MD who is now in ED custody) or his family or for that matter any private entities controlled by them and that "all credit facilities availed were fully secured".The ED has alleged that many companies including the Essel Group, Anil Ambani Group, HDIL, DHFL, among others have borrowed money from Yes Bank by giving kickbacks to Kapoor."We wish to confirm that the Enforcement Directorate has summoned Subhash Chandra on March 18 to make a statement on the information which is already available with them," the Zee group said in a statement. The statement further said Chandra will certainly be present to make the statement and will be more than happy to extend any support or cooperation requested by the ED. "However, the group wishes to clarify that most of the credit facilities were availed of by its infrastructure business and there is no debt on ZEEL, ZMCL, etc," it said. BEN MKJ

Zee Group says all loan from Yes Bank fully secured as ED summons Subhash Chandra on Mar 18

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">DeepMind</div></div></div>Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Thursday.<ol><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/deepmind-cofounder-mustafa-suleyman-taking-leave-2019-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">The co-founder of DeepMind, the artificial intelligence research company acquired by Google in 2014, has quietly gone on leave and it isn't clear why</a>. DeepMind said Mustafa Suleyman was on leave by mutual agreement, and that he was expected back by the end of the year.</li><li><a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kv4q/microsoft-human-contractors-listened-to-xbox-owners-homes-kinect-cortana">Contractors working for Microsoft Xbox listened to audio of players speaking at home to improve the console's voice command features, Motherboard reports</a>. The contractors said most of the voices they heard were children's.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-ceo-tim-cook-calls-donald-trump-china-tariffs-2019-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">President Trump has said he talks with Apple CEO Tim Cook directly because he calls him personally rather than hiring consultants, unlike other major business figures</a>. Trump told Fox News: "Others go out and hire very expensive consultants, and Tim Cook calls Donald Trump directly. Pretty good." </li><li> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-campus-hyderabad-india-photo-tour-2019-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">Amazon opened its biggest campus to date on Wednesday, in the financial district of Hyderabad, India</a>. Amazon India Country Head Amit Agarwal calls the campus "a tangible commitment to that long-term thinking and our plans for India."</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-renews-ice-government-contract-gotham-amid-protests-2019-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">Big data company Palantir has renewed its controversial contract with ICE, according to government filings</a>. The contract has been renewed for the next three years and is worth nearly $50 million, according to redacted text.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/student-luka-ivezic-in-twitter-chinese-propaganda-purge-2019-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">A 24-year-old student in London was left baffled after being caught up in Twitter's purge of Chinese propaganda accounts</a>. Luka Ivezic is a Croatian-born student studying disinformation at a London university, and said he's never visited China.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/zeel-customers-harassment-report-response-2019-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">On-demand massage startup Zeel reportedly ignored therapists' complaints about sexual harassment and misconduct from its customers</a>. A Gizmodo report suggests that Zeel ignored multiple complaints, with therapists complaining of clients requesting abdomen and upper thigh massages, and even groin massages.</li><li> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/giovanni-buttarelli-death-mourned-by-apple-ceo-tim-cook-2019-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">Giovanni Buttarelli, the European Data Protection Supervisor who was instrumental in introducing Europe's strict new privacy laws in 2018, has died at the age of 62</a>. Apple CEO Tim Cook was among those who paid tribute to Buttarelli.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-robot-fighting-videos-removed-for-violating-animal-cruelty-policy-2019-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">YouTube reportedly removed multiple videos from its platform of robots fighting, claiming they showed "the deliberate infliction of animal suffering."</a> Multiple YouTube creators, including many who have been contestants on the TV competition BattleBots, said they received emails from YouTube notifying them that some of their robot-fighting videos have been taken down from the platform. </li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/megan-rapinoe-usher-rick-perry-duped-instagram-chain-hoax-2019-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">US Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who is in charge of securing the country's nuclear arsenal, fell for an Instagram chain hoax on Tuesday</a>. He and other celebrities reposted the same clumsily worded "legal" message about Instagram making all of its users' photos and messages public - a rehash of a hoax that dates back to at least 2012.</li></ol>Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings.You can also <a href="https://newsletter.businessinsider.com/join/free">subscribe to this newsletter</a> here - just tick "10 Things in Tech You Need to Know." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mexico-buy-legal-gun-store-2015-8">Mexico has just one store where you can legally buy a gun and it's located on a heavily-guarded military base</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

10 things in tech you need to know today

<ul><li>With the industry changing at a rapid pace, throwing a new set of challenges every day, experts are hoping that 2020 will be a game-changer that will help them redefine a lot of rules in advertising, with smarter marketing techniques. </li><li>We spoke to a few industry experts to identify these new opportunities that 2020 will bring forth for the industry and here is what they had to say. </li></ul>2019 was an interesting year -- full of ups and downs for the advertising, media and marketing industry. While we saw <keyword id="618493" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="digital-marketing">digital marketing</keyword> taking the center stage and brands experimenting with newer formats on the medium, the economic slowdown affected consumer sentiments, and naturally, the industry. However, during this period of tough economy, the industry tried to squeeze out the inefficiencies to make themselves more productive. As we enter 2020, the industry is hopeful to rise to its full strength together. They are all set to reap the benefits of AR and VR, voice, influencer marketing, and much more to stay ahead in the game. We spoke to a few industry experts to identify these new opportunities that 2020 will bring forth for the industry and here is what they had to say: Will Scougal, Director of International Creative Strategy, Snapchat: I don’t think there’ll be one dominant trend but several interlinked trends that have emerged over the last decade all achieving scale and creating real shifts in the way we experience and interact with brands. Over the last few years people have increasingly shifted their attention to mobile and, as they have become more confident navigating the world with their handset, they’re looking for quality experiences. What we’ve seen at Snapchat is that people are choosing to spend time adding a creative layer to their world through AR (Augmented Reality). As this format continues to scale, both on Snapchat and beyond, we are going to see more innovative, useful, and immersive experiences being built by brands embracing the marketing benefits of AR as a full funnel format. In addition to the growing popularity of AR, we are also going to see premium mobile video content gain more viewers. As audiences rise, we can expect to see more quality made-for-mobile shows from studios, publishers, entertainers and brands who are adapting to the mobile mindset of people. Ashish Bhasin, CEO - APAC and Chairman India, Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific: Voice and performance will gain much more prominence than they did so far in the industry. With the emergence of OTT and data rates going down, there is a natural preference towards digitisation amongst younger audience. Equally, voice is so intuitive, it will be naturally driven more and more on a daily basis -- whether you are driving or use some voice assistant on your phone, which will be simplified with time. On the other hand, clients are also under-pressure to deliver results every quarter, hence, they will be far more interested in performance rather than just pure brand-building. Prathyusha Agarwal, Chief Marketing Officer, ZEEL: With consumption across platforms, the most dominating trend of 2020 would be brand and character love that transcends multiple screens. Viewers will share their dining tables and living rooms with our content on television satisfying the craving for anticipation of a new story, the first bite to savour the emotion and relationship with our characters every day. They will then stretch it across multiple screens and interactions binging on it, dipping in, dipping out and gorging on it through time and space. As broadcasters, we need to gear up our backend to tailor-make our content such that it is adept to the multiple platform front-end user interfaces. There is a shift needed from thinking of content development as an uncertain creative process to building a nuanced understanding the cultural core that makes viewers tick, what they want/ need, where do they need it and have the capability to evolve our craft to deliver that. To own multiple screens where stories and characters are loved beyond just television, content creators and curators, will have to manage the share of pie on each of platforms to maximise screen hours. Sameer Saxena, Chief Content Officer and Head of TVF: “For 2020, we will continue to strengthen our partnerships with OTT platforms and brands equally. We plan to venture into new genres like thrillers and romance amongst others. We will also explore non-fiction properties as there isn’t much happening in this space. Our aim is to release around 15 to 20 shows in the year including a few in regional languages starting with Marathi. In addition to new shows we're also planning the second seasons of some of our key shows like ‘Kota Factory’, ‘Cubicles’, and ‘Hostel Daze’.“ Dinesh Chhabra, CEO, Usha International: “The consumer durables sector has shown a consistent growth and Usha International Ltd leads this growth from the front riding on new product launches like the Bloom series and Racer fans, as well as the introduction of a whole slew of colorful new kitchen appliances. During this period of tough economy, Usha tightened its operating belt to squeeze out the inefficiencies to make itself leaner and more productive. Usha believes in keeping the customer at the core of our businesses and hence ensures that all the new products that we have recently developed keeping consumer insights in mind and built to fulfil their needs, thereby transforming their daily lives. We expect the New Year to fuel consumer demand and a stabilization of growth patterns in coming quarters. We, at Usha, will continue in our journey to launch new products and innovative technologies, and improve the depth of our distribution penetration specifically in the geographies which are growing at a GDP growth higher than the national average.” Koshy George, Chief Marketing Officer, Marico Limited: One big trend for me will continue to be digital. You will continue to find a lot more digital adoption because the rates, while they have gone up, continue to be rock bottom in the country. And you will find that a lot of time that consumers spend will move into digital and hence the focus to continue to build brands and invest there will be one big trend that we look at. And as part of that, there are a lot of medium like TikTok that have suddenly come and exploded out of nowhere. We have recently worked with the platform and seen really good results so that'll be an area of focus. Secondly, while the economy has been witnessing a slowdown, there is still a room for a lot of premiumization. And there's a big trend in sustainability that is slowly but surely picking up momentum and is something we will see more of in 2020. Amer Jaleel, Group CCO &amp; Chairman, MullenLowe Lintas Group: I see content saturation coming. We have to start seeing consumers as audiences in the Media Age. Everybody is creating content with ease through apps. While this explosion leads to satisfying the creative urge among people and that surely is a good thing, but coupled with the march of platforms and production, this is leading very rapidly to content fatigue. Once we see our consumers as an audience, we have to account for the fatigue they have to overcome to see the frankly poor quality of brand content that most of us are putting out. The only way marketeers and their brand partners have is to be ahead of and fresher than the content that's being dished out. I can clearly see that the phrase 'break the clutter' is outdated. We will have to preempt all the evolution of what we call clutter and be ahead of the thinking of the clutter makers. Gurmeet Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, Johnson Controls-Hitachi Air Conditioning India: To stand out from the crowd, companies are putting the customer at the heart of everything they do. This has led to the emergence of exceptional customer experiences. Marketing in the modern era has to play a significant role in shaping these experiences. Artificial Intelligence is certainly going to be a game changer driving the marketing landscape in 2020. This Next-gen technology will create new avenues of effective marketing and customer experiences. One of the trendiest topics across the world, both in B2B and B2C spaces, AI is going to take the charge as it holds the power to evolve businesses, accelerate customer experiences and boost sales like never before. Audience segmentation with in-depth understanding of the demand is key to success in any B2B module. Here AI will empower and align business, marketing and sales teams to accurately analyze the demand touchpoints much before a lead generation. This will ensure faster and concrete conversion of leads resulting in enriched customer experiences. Artificial Intelligence can play a significant role in influencing marketing strategies and predicting favorable product and service outcome. With AI things will become faster, easier, more convenient and affordable for business ecosystem to meet the ever evolving customer expectations. New India’s smart customer is globally connected and is curious to explore, experiment and experience. Today, customers are considering exceptional experiences as a critical aspect of their buying decision. In the B2C segment, AI has a huge role to play. It is also the responsibility of businesses and marketers to ethically leverage the power of this impactful tool. Without invading the privacy of customers, AI should aim at significantly providing intelligent and informed customer experiences by equipping marketing and product teams to effectively analyse consumer behavior, acceptance, demand and delivery points. This will ensure a smooth end to end customer journey that is more customized and interactive in the most natural and ethical manner. AI will also support the marketing landscape by enabling powerful and high-impact consumer insights to disrupt customer satisfaction and enhance success factors of product and service innovations. TikTok spokesperson: In 2019, we saw a drastic shift in online content consumption behavior. As the internet continued to democratize, Indians moved beyond the traditional consumption of entertainment content and are now avidly looking at videos to educate themselves on variety of topics such as self-improvement, health, fitness, e- learning languages, among others. In 2020, we foresee this trend to grow, with brands and NGOs leveraging short video formats with platforms such as TikTok. At the same time, given shorter attention spans, it will be critical for content to break through the clutter, be creative, fun and engaging, in order to attract audiences. Shamsuddin Jasani, Group MD, Isobar South Asia: Voice as a technology is coming into its own and is going to be a big trend in 2020. With Hindi as a language being made available on Alexa, it will open up huge opportunities in the future. Secondly, with advancements in technology, augmented reality is going to take off in a big way. And the third biggest trend will again come from the world of vernacular content. Local languages are going to explode as we go into 2020 and you will see more OTT players investing on local languages. Pratik Gupta, Co-founder, FoxyMoron: "2020 will be the year for digitally evolved agencies and digitally involved clients. Hyper-personalization of content through all digital platforms should be the biggest trend this year. Along with the innovation on digital; Voice, OTT, Social, Progressive Web Apps, the use of Hyper-Personalisation are going to be imperative. While the entire ecosystem believes that the consumer does not want to see advertisements, I believe that ads &amp; communication served to an exposed cookie pool at the right time and at the right place is the future. This year we will be working on creating workflows, technologies and teams to cater to this need for brands and consumers alike." Also see: 
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The top trends that will dominate the advertising, marketing and media industry in 2020

John Battelle's New Reverse-Conference Is Coming To New York... You Go To The Companies!

In India cricket is like a religion, and World Cup is the biggest festival. Historically, the event has got large audiences glued to their television sets and radio boxes but in the last 2-3 years, with the penetration of smartphones and Internet, the game is beginning to be consumed on the online platform as well. 
 
For the records, online (web and mobile) viewership of IPL 2014, that was shown on starsports.com and Times Internet's Gocricket.com, reached a base of over 10 million for first 15 matches, data by GroupM-owned media buying firm Mindshare said. 
 
And, the video streaming of ICC World T20 2014 on Starsports.com attracted more than 80.9 lakh users during the fortnight-long tournament delivering more than 2.24 crore visits culminating to a total of 101 million live minutes of video consumed. Now, these are huge numbers and digital publishers are leaving no stones unturned to get better stats this year. 
 
Stakeholders Gear Up 
 Star <keyword id="6356028" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sports">Sports</keyword> is the official broadcaster for the 2015 World Cup that will be held in Australia. Starsports.com will offer live streaming and 24x7 video-on-demand accessible through the Web, WAP and Apps on 200+ devices. 
 Apart from Star, other online portals that attract cricket consuming traffic have also prepared for the day. ESPNCricinfo launched a 100 day multimedia campaign as a run up to the event to engage with its readers by providing them all the relevant content related to the event. Their focus is on videos, images, quick score updates, along with crisp analysis from the former Indian <keyword id="1520" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Cricketer">cricketer</keyword>, Rahul Dravid. 
 
On the editorial front, it has created a separate page called World Cup 2015, which is giving the latest news, polls, team updates, fixtures, along with highlights of previous World Cups such as best innings, bowling spells, catches, and other stuff. It has also launched a special guide for the World Cup priced at around $12. 
 
Ramesh Kumar, head, ESPN Digital Media India and ESPNCricinfo, says, “World is expanding to digital and the growth of the medium vis–a-vis traditional is going very strong. We are walking on the same path, but side by side keep a strong focus on the traditional medium too.” 
 Cricket Country, owned by ZEEL, has created a separated page for the live updates of the event, where in constant editorials on pre-world cup analysis have been updated. It has sent reporters to <keyword id="124742" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ground-Zero">ground zero</keyword> and working towards generating viral videos around the World Cup, showcasing people’s passion. 
 
Sandeep Amar, COO, India.com, said, “We have launched a new design UI/UX for users for a new enhanced look. We have also improved our score card to make it easier for our visitors to analyse the match quickly.” 
 Another popular portal <keyword id="2727667" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sportskeeda-com">Sportskeeda.com</keyword>, has also created a micro site for the event, which is populated with current news, opinions, and other flashes from the previous world cups. 
 
Musab Abid, managing editor, Sportskeeda, said, “We want to do things that are different and attract niche audiences. Our writers will develop content around humour, tweets which will come in, create features based on statistic and develop exciting and different forms of contents for the consumers.” 
 
The Game of Scorecards 
 
Publishers believe that while live streaming will be with Star, a large amount of traction will come from score card updates and then the questions arises who can do it the right and the fastest? 
 
Anupam Mukherji, better known as Fake IPL player and co-founder, Pitch Invasion says, “What matters most to the cricket fans is the score. Those who are able to provide the score faster will get the ball. Mobile streaming will not be as big as mobile score updates in texts. Hence, apps supporting mobile updates will be much more in demand. Providing users with a live updates experience along with social interactivity would be interesting.” 
 Mukherji has distributed his Hindi Scoryboard product to near 55 million <keyword id="6355645" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="android">Android</keyword> users and also doing social media integration; offering brands the options of integrating their social media campaign with the live scores. 
 
Since all the matches are in daytime (Indian Standard Time), online will play a big role as people will follow it on the move and mostly on the handheld devices. “This time, I expect a very high number of people to be following cricket in Hindi,” said Mukherji. It is important to note here that according to an IAMAI report there were over 173 million mobile Internet users in India in December, 2014 and this will reach to 213 million in June, 2015. This figure was 46 million in 2011. 
 
Advertiser Response: Time To Make Money 
 
According to media planners, the expected ad spends on the ICC World Cup 2015 will be to the tune of Rs 1, 200 crore while the overall cricket spends could be around Rs 2,500 crore including the IPL. Cricket is an assured bet for advertisers in India. World Cup drives huge audiences and publishers are keen on charging premium rates for it. A major opportunity this time will be sponsoring the scorecards since most publishers will compete with it. 
 Cricketcountry.com has got six advertisers so far and the slot is open for one or two more advertisers. “We have advertising partners from sectors like automobiles, <keyword id="34523" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="fmcg">FMCG</keyword> groups, Financial Groups and Banks,” said Amar. ESPNCricinfo tells that it has Gionee, <keyword id="6355629" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Google">Google</keyword> and several other partners for it. While Sportskeeda also claimed to have quite a few advertisers who will be using its microsite for their campaigns. 
 
Publishers point that the sentiment is high among the advertisers and their inventories are selling like hotcakes, but they mention that only those advertisers who have a certain association with cricket will join the brand wagon especially for online. 
 
While Mukherji feels that the excitement among the advertiser is low this time. “Everyone is complaining that the World Cup inventory is yet not sold. It’s been softer than most IPL seasons over the past few years, possibly because the Indian team’s performance in Australia tri-series was low,” he adds. 
 
Ad spends is divided into search, social, affiliations, performance and display. “We have 50 % of the ad spends in search, 15-20% in social, 10-15% in affiliation and performance, 15-22% in display,” said Amar. 
 
Though from the last World Cup in 2011 to 2015, world has changed and especially digital consumption, publishers still hope that despite eventful year for cricket (off ground action), because India is the defending champions, the traction will be good. That said, advertisers are sceptical of India’s performance in the World Cup, and hence, are not showing much interest. 
(Image: The Economic Times) 
(About the author: This article has been contributed by Priyanka Verma.)

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