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| Action hots up inside the box |
| Priyanka Joshi & Shivani Shinde / Mumbai Jun 14, 2010, 00:39 IST |
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A packed sports calendar for 2010-11 has convinced consumers to take home a digital set-top box.
When a cricket-crazy nation like ours starts counting days to soccer matches, or starts crossing out dates to the Wimbledon, you know why set-top box (STB) retailers eye sports fans with a renewed interest.
Around 21 million of the country’s 130 million TV sets use Direct to Home (DTH) services, while 84 million have cable connections. The DTH base is set to reach 30 million this year, courtesy the sporting events.
Confident that the rise in interest in global sporting events like the Indian Premier League, English Premier League and now FIFA World Cup will impel home viewers to switch to digital high-definition (HD) broadcasts, the DTH industry affirms it is set to grow faster in 2010. Consumers are responding — sales of STBs are being touted to be as good as the buying spree around festive seasons like Diwali.
Sugato Banerji, chief marketing officer (DTH), Bharti Airtel, says: “We have seen two seasons of IPL. The difference in subscriber base before the season starts to just before IPL begins is about 50 per cent. This March, we achieved the best sales after Diwali.”
Airtel DTH expects a renewed interest for STBs among users in select regions during FIFA 2010. “Kolkata, Orissa and Kerala will see an increase and we expect that the subscriber base will go up by as much as 75 per cent in the regions where football is closely followed. The trend would, however, be marginal in some of the cities where the sport is less followed.” It is predicted that there would be an upswing in sales of digital STBs among TV-viewing households in Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad, too.
Umesh Rao, senior vice-president (marketing), Reliance BIG TV, who has seen Reliance STB sales zoom by 30 per cent in the first six months this year, agrees. “The sporting season kicked off with IPL-3 and so did STB sales. Just last month, we rolled out HD digital video-recorder STBs across top 100 cities, which further helped us expand our consumer base,” he claims.
Young sports enthusiasts like 33-year-old Navneet Chourey are the ones who are driving up the demand for HD STBs, as they switch to newer LCD TVs. Chourey decided to buy a flat-panel 46-inch LG LED TV, pre-bundled with a Reliance BIG TV. He says: “I am paying monthly instalments for this indulgence, but, besides the FIFA matches, a host of events like the Commonwealth Games, followed by the Wimbledon and motor sports, convinced me that nothing less than an HD would make me happy.”
Unwilling to let competition take its customers away, Reliance says, in the next two months, BIG TV will launch five new HD channels and a host of HD content by forging strategic alliances with top global HD content providers. “We have to give HD content to our subscribers, who pay a premium for the HD DVRs, and it only helps us in engaging the users better,” says BIG TV’s Rao.
That’s where discerning viewers like Ashutosh Kukreja, creative designer with a leading TV and film production house in Mumbai, fit in. Kukreja refused to hook up a cable connection to his TV, for which he paid Rs 69,000. He reasons: “An analog cable connection made no sense on a high-definition LED TV. I wanted an STB that could record my matches, in case I missed those.” The 38-year-old professional chose Tata Sky Plus, which could record his matches, and is planning to host a FIFA-themed party, to flash his new gadgets, for his friends.
STBs have been selling like hot cakes at Dish TV’s end, too. “This only tells us that image clarity on TV sets is something the new-age users don’t want to compromise with. There’s no way a consumer would like to team up his flat-panel HD TV with a cable connection. He would most likely invest in an STB with latest features,” argues Salil Kapoor, COO, DishTV. Adoption of a new TV-viewing platform is high at the time of sporting events, and the sentiment is shared by Vikram Mehra, chief marketing officer, Tata Sky. During IPL-3, Tata Sky saw women consumers accelerating its sales, preferring the premium DVR-based services. “Today, we see many users prefer the personal recorder-based STB to store their favourite matches. Within the DVR segment, we registered a 50 per cent gain,” he emphasises. Tata Sky viewers also get to enjoy the company’s tie-ups with ESPN and Star Sports — content providers for FIFA 2010 and several other international sport events, too.
The mad scramble to add subscribers this season is further driving up the discounts that consumers can avail of. For instance, Airtel DTH has extended its special price scheme for STBs at Rs 1,590 to 75 days from 50 earlier and even provides ESPN channel for free. Likewise, Videocon d2h is pre-bundling a four-month sports pack free along with every purchase. Dish TV, on its part, has inked a special deal with ESPN to broadcast FIFA 2010 in the HD format for free. Dish Tru HD STB is priced at Rs 5,990 and the HD channel bouquet includes Zee TV HD, Zee Cinema HD, Discovery World HD and National Geographic HD for Rs 150 a month.
Yet, Sun Direct COO Tony D’Silva has chosen to carefully tread the surge in demand for sports channel subscriptions. He says: “What we have seen is that during important sporting events, customers prefer to take sports channels as add-ons, but they later go back to the original offering. In our case, we have seen the subscription for sports channels increasing by 25-30 per cent with major events.”
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