It's a challenge for the cricketers, fun for the people, but revenue for the service providers. Yes, Indian telcos and broadcasters have spruced up their marketing activities in order to grab their share of customer engagement and additional revenue streams.

Cricket and other sports are close to several companies' marketing plans when they make their marketing and sales budget. The reasons are two-fold. First, cricket in India is like a religion! It draws much more excitement, passion and fan following than any other sport. Cricket builds bonds between service providers and customers. And, it brings additional revenues and visibility for the brand. The games, the companies are playing are plenty. Mobile service providers, broadcasters, broadband companies, content providers and gaming portals are talking about their action plan for the World Cup. And, this year, the number of action-packed initiatives with substantial investments has gone up and there is an increase in excitement as compared to the previous World Cup matches-thanks to the flow of funds among the exceedingly demanding middle class and competition among top telcos. On top of this, India's tele-density has touched around 17% in 2007 from around 4% in 2001.

The Game Plan
The World Cup offers a huge revenue opportunity through a combination of relevant promotions and backing it up with good service/content quality. The huge cricket mania in India has definitely turned the sport into a large industry in the country. Whoever taps its potential reaps the benefits. Of course, there is a special price to be paid by customers for all these action-oriented services, and operators are excited about their plans.

Manoj Kohli, president (Mobility), Bharti Airtel, said "Cricket and other sports are very close to our heart and are one of our priorities. Association with the World Cup cricket helps us immensely in interacting with customers. Beyond revenue generation, engagement with customers through several interactive activities will benefit both customers and our brand that has been associating with live sports events. Besides the revenue opportunity, it also gives service and content providers an opportunity to delight customers by keeping them updated on what will be the most popular and publicized event during March-April."

Says Arun Mehra, chief marketing officer, Zapak.com, a full-service software gaming entertainment company and a part of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group "We are delighted to see the overwhelming response from customers for our single-player and multi-player cricket games on our gaming portal. We have crossed one million registered users and one million pages of viewing a day. During World Cup cricket, the number of page viewing would go up substantially, thanks to our interactive games."

Cellebrum is offering services in the form of contests and subscription pack. Cricket ka Chausar is one of the contests incorporating the mythological epic Mahabharata into cricket

During this World Cup, cricket is poised to harvest major revenues for the mobile VAS market. "We, at Cellebrum, believe in providing our subscribers the best of mobile experience in line with their sentiments and excitement around cricket. Keeping this in mind, we have rolled out various value added services across different platforms such as cricket games and contests," Saket Agarwal, COO, Cellebrum, said.

Several companies are providing fans with unique, economical and effective ways of enjoying the stadium experience from the comfort of their homes. "We expect phenomenal response during the World Cup which will further propel us to achieve our target of one million subscribers at the end of our first year of operations," Vikram Mehra, head, Consumer Marketing, Tata Sky, said.

Sundaraman K, head of sales, Google India said, "Google aims to constantly improve its user experience by designing products that make things easier and deliver better results than what was available before. Cricket is one of the key passions of users in India and this campaign is designed to bring people across communities together, offering them a unique cricket experience across different Google platforms."