Uday Sodhi’s Kurate Digital Consulting to produce digital sports content

In a content-hungry country like India, digital sports content will always find takers. As per emarketer, in 2018 67 per cent of internet users in India aged 16 to 64 watched sports coverage or highlights online during Q3 2018. 45 per cent watched sports content on their mobile phones while 36 per cent on laptops - What earlier used to be consumed on TV has swiftly moved into digital space with maximum consumption on mobile.

As per Uday Sodhi of Kurate Digital Consulting, “As more and more cricket heroes are emerging the propensity to consume cricket on digital platforms is going to increase exponentially. Soccer leagues like the English Premier League (EPL), UEFA Champions league also have a strong following on digital platforms.”

“Domestic leagues in other sports, kabaddi, hockey and sensitivity to develop sports talent in major Olympic disciplines are going to provide the impetus, and the appetite to consume sports will only grow in the country. Brands love to associate with digital sports content as more consumers become mobile-first content consumers."

Digital video accounted for 20 per cent share of the sports rights pie in 2019 and is expected to grow to 40 per cent by 2024. Sports monetization on television, as well as digital, will be robust, driven by a number of factors, including the addition of more than 250 million broadband subscribers over 2019-2024 as per Media Partners Asia.

“With all the major sporting events resuming their live telecast including cricket and the EPL, there is going to be a rush for digital sports content to compensate for a shortfall in revenue and period of inactivity. All kinds of promotional deals and sponsorships are going to resume in full swing and that’s a big impetus to digital sports content producers,” says Naina Toor of Rootanian, a bespoke creative business studio.

Considering the strong demand for digital sports content, Kurate Digital Consulting and Rootanian have collaborated to create branded content which will leverage the expertise of both within a sports context and will be able to provide scale and drive engagement across social and other channels as per the defined marketing objectives. Advertising funded programmes are another focus area of this partnership which will be able to leverage sports in a big way to get the advertisers message across.

Both Sodhi and Toor are senior ex-employees of Sony Pictures Network with over a decade of successful careers in the media and digital industry and creative content and direction respectively.

One of the recent and successful offerings of the collaboration is ‘Viru ki Baithak’ featuring Virender Sehwag, a daily morning show on ‘Facebook Watch’ which focuses on cricket with interesting trivia and match analysis, around the Dream11 IPL Dubai. The show is the brainchild of Naina and Uday while the IP of the show is owned by Rootanian.