SonyLiv introduces cricket on its app, launches campaign for fans

SonyLiv which has for long showcased sports properties like football, basketball, fight sports, tennis and other sports, is all set to introduce a cricket offering on its platform. The India cricket tour of South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies will be shown live on the platform. The tour begins on June 23.

Audiences can now view their favourite team battle it out on Sony Pictures Networks India’s (SPN) digital platform – SonyLiv. To make a buzz about the announcement, the player launched a campaign – ‘Jahaan Fan Dikhe Bol Do’ (wherever you see a fan, tell them). The thought behind the campaign was to talk to fans about sports and cricket and start a conversation. “This is the first time cricket is coming to SonyLiv and we wanted our sports fans to speak about it,” Uday Sodhi, EVP and Head, Digital Business, SPN added.

Created by Publicis Communications, the campaign ‘Jahaan Fan Dikhe Bol Do', celebrates the inherent diversity of Indian cricket fans and asks them to spread the word about Indian cricket arriving in a grand way on SonyLiv.

Uday Sodhi

Speaking about their first cricket offering on the platform, Sodhi explained, “From our perspective we have been a leader in the entire football, basketball and fight force space till now. We’ve done many football tournaments and hosted them on SonyLiv. We’ve got a huge football following and people come back to us to consume sports. We believe that the next six to nine months is about India cricket season with India going to West India, Sri Lanka and South Africa. We are going to have lots of cricket going forward. There are five ODIs, then T20 matches and much more that is coming up and all that is going to be hosted on SonyLiv. That’s going to give us a significantly larger footprint, beyond our other sports offering. We are hopeful that it will add value to our consumer base.”

Sodhi added, “By making India’s international cricket tour available to SonyLiv audiences we intend to reinforce our credentials as the online destination for fans to enjoy an ultimate cricketing experience. ‘Jahaan Fan Dikhe Bol Do’ fuels the passion that rages within each fan while celebrating this sport. The campaign urges cricket fans to spread the cheer and unite in the rallying cry of superior sporting action.”

The tour has come to the platform as part of the entire Ten Sports acquisition of SPN. There was no formal bid for the same. What the platform is excited about is the investments in the last six to nine months in upgrading their live streaming capability. They’ve seen in all the football tournaments that their consumers had a great experience in low and high bandwidths. They’ve done a lot of work in the backend to provide a great experience to the users.

On the marketing front, the digital player will have a 360 degree campaign over the next three to six months. “We have started this campaign on television. We plan to take this on-ground, on radio, outdoor. The idea is to create buzz about telling your friends about where to watch and what to watch. There will also be a digital push,” added Sodhi.

Paritosh Srivastava

Paritosh Srivastava, COO, Publicis Communications, said, “Indian cricket being available on SonyLiv is a huge opportunity for us to leverage to attract fans to our platform. The tougher part of this campaign was to come up with an idea on cricket that is fresh and unseen. We believe that ‘Jahaan Fan Dikhe Bol Do’ captures the true spirit of the Indian fan and does justice to the fervour of cricket is on our country.”

The TVC:

Credits:

Client: SonyLiv

Agency: Publicis India

Creative team: Jigar Fernandes, Gururaj Rao, Srijan Shukla

Account Management: Paritosh Srivastava, Atin Wahal, Punit Bhatt, Poorvi Dhargalkar

Production house: Conversation Films

Producer: Azad Anesh

Director: Kamlesh Soni

Film Head: Jignesh Maru

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