MAD ABOUT CRICKET: NDTV has signed up M.S. Dhoni for Rs 1.5 crore a year

Item: For its news channels, NDTV signed up Indian cricket team’s star batsman and wicket keeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni last week. The New Delhi-based company plans to create 70 shows with the cricketer during the one-year duration of the exclusive contract.

Item: Anil Kumble is exclusively available to the English news channel CNN-IBN.

Item: Sahara has inked a deal with Virendra Sehwag.

Suddenly, virtually every news channel is furiously signing on cricket stars. The Delhi-based Hindi news channel, Channel 7, has roped in Yashpal Sharma. Zee network has tied up with Kapil Dev. Even a small, city-specific channel like S1 in Delhi is said to have roped in cricketer Amit Bhandari.

Ajay Jadeja, Arun Lal, Javagal Srinath and many others hop from studio to studio, often on a non-exclusive basis. Says a senior executive at a Delhi-based news channel: “Almost all the news channels are chasing cricketers ? current or former ? to sign exclusive programming deals with them. Thanks to the high demand, even retired players are hiking their rates to appear on the small screen.” Adds Zee Sports chief Himanshu Modi: “Exclusive contracts between news channels and cricketers are the trend.”

Needless to say, it’s become a big numbers game. Media industry sources say that NDTV signed up Dhoni for Rs 1.5 crore for one year.

According to media industry estimates, deals with the members of the current cricket team cost Rs 1 crore and above. Cricketers who are retired are available for Rs 24 lakh and Rs 50 lakh a year. Zee is estimated to have got Kapil Dev for Rs 55 lakh.

To be sure, news channels have hired cricket stars in the past, though such deals were rare two years ago. In 2002-2003, NDTV set the trend of paying cricketers to appear on news channels. It entered into an exclusive tie up with the Indian cricket team’s then vice captain Rahul Dravid and apparently forked out Rs 5 lakh per appearance.

Not to be outdone, Aaj Tak hired Sourav Ganguly for an estimated Rs 2 crore and created a chat show around him. “Till the payment system was started, cricketers used to talk to news channels in any case,” says a former NDTV executive. However, as the number of news channels multiplied, the demand for cricketers rose.

Why are news channels so hot on cricket and cricketers? “In the sports genre, only cricket sells in India,” points out Shantanu Guha Ray, sports editor of Channel 7. “Indian viewers have to know what’s being said about cricket....it could be a cricket show, cricket controversy or live cricket,” he adds.

Football, the only other sport that has some following in India, was promoted by ESPN with the help of cricket stars during the last World Cup. Sourav Ganguly, who also plays football, was roped in for his expert opinion on the game. A fresh football promo featuring Sachin Tendulkar was created and rolled out especially for the Indian market, recalls Ray.

Jeet Banerjee, CEO of the Calcutta-based sports marketing agency Gameplan (which represents Dhoni and the Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan), notes that doing studio shows on cricket for news channels makes more sense than producing them for sports channels. “Audiences prefer live sports on sports channels but will be more inclined to watch a chat show or debate on cricket on a news channel as the genre lends itself to that programme format,” he argues.

For news channels, signing on a cricketer helps them stand out from the crowd. “So if NDTV is competing with Aaj Tak and Star News, it can say it has Dhoni on its channel,” points out Peter Isaac, president, Perspectrum, the brand consultancy company of the advertising conglomerate Percept Holdings. “You must not view cricketers as a bunch of boys playing cricket. They are the brand ambassadors and role models for Indians,” says Isaac.

Some also argue that roping in cricketers and creating shows on the game attracts advertising. Points out NDTV Media CEO Raj Nayak: “The return on investment is immediate. In our case, the brands that Dhoni endorses would definitely like to be associated with the programme which features him.” Adds Naren Tripathi, a broadcasting industry advertising sales expert and director of the consultancy company Mediaguru Quality Solutions, “It’s like telling advertisers, I have this star, now put your money in my channel.”

Still, not everyone agrees that spending crores of rupees on cricket is advisable for news channels. Former ESPN and NDTV executives say that the shows created around Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid on the two channels bombed. In one case the main sponsor also backed out of the show.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) recently banned cricket team members from talking to the media and restrained them from making comments on team performance. Says Star News CEO Uday Shankar: “The current players can’t talk on relevant subjects or generate controversies. Retired cricketers have no star appeal. So give me one good reason why we should sign on a mega cricket star?” He adds that Wah Cricket on Star News has the highest channel share among all the cricket shows on news channels. “And we have no ‘stars’ on the show. We have cricketer Sandeep Patil and some distinctive programming,” he adds.

In fact, critics make the point that the channel share for most cricket shows on news channels is minuscule. But a spokesman for TAM, the television ratings tracking agency, says that television rating points (TRPs) or shares are no pointers to the viability of a cricket show on news channels. “Understand that niche channel genres like sports and news do not generate TRPs as high as the general entertainment channels. But these shows attract the relevant target audience,” he adds.

For all the scepticism, a senior executive at a news channel who says that it’s foolish to invest in cricketers concedes that his channel is also talking to Sachin Tendulkar for building non-cricket programmes with the star.

So, for now, cricketers seem to have become the hottest property of Indian TV channels. But will this lucky run last?