T20 World Cup 2021: India's exit not to impact ad revenue for broadcaster

New Delhi: India’s exit from the ongoing T20 cricket world cup may have disappointed fans in the country but broadcaster Star India has already sold out its advertising inventory for the rest of the tournament. While viewership in the country is widely expected to drop for the rest of the tournament due to the Indian team’s exit, industry sources said as far as Star India is concerned it wouldn’t suffer loss of advertising revenue. [caption id=“attachment_10117911” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  File image of the Indian cricket team. AP[/caption] “The ad inventory for the tournament is already sold out irrespective of whether India is playing semi-finals/finals or not,” an industry source said. Comments from Star India on the matter couldn’t be obtained as the mailed query remained unanswered. However, in a separate statement, the broadcaster said the India-Pakistan match played earlier on the tournament “created history by clocking a record reach of 167 million viewers, making it the most viewed T20I match till date”. “There’s no doubt that the result of the match and India’s exit from the tournament disappointed fans but the record viewership displays the unique power of cricket to engage audiences at an unprecedented scale,” said a Star India spokesperson. However, India’s early exits is a major dampener for advertisers. According to Rediffusion Managing Director Sandeep Goyal, there was a lot of hope and optimism which pushed up expectations on spot pricing. “About 90 per cent of inventory might be sold. So there is not much overall impact for the broadcaster. But viewership will really suffer. So advertisers are bound to crib,” he said. The impact will not be felt on World Cup sales but will surely bring down enthusiasm on spot pricing for the NZ series, he added.