A big yawn. That's how advertisers greeted Star Sports' Pro Kabaddi League, launched in July last year.

India is cricket crazy. Why would anyone spend advertising money on the assumption that Indians would watch Kabaddi - a local team sport, played without props and a game that almost no one in Metro India relates to.Star India, now worth US$1.2 billion, picked up next to nothing in ad revenues.

Star Sports Pro Kabaddi League turned out to be one of the biggest successes in Indian sports broadcasting. About 128 million Indians - just about half the number that saw India's biggest sports event, the Indian Premier League 2014 or IPL - watched Star Sports Pro Kabaddi League.

Weekly viewership was very close to that of Star Plus' top-rated soap, Diya aur Baati Hum (We are lamp and wick). And the few advertisers that betted on it, such as Pidilite, owners of the adhesive brand Fevicol, are ecstatic. "We are very pleased with the ratings," says Anil Jayraj, Pidilite's chief marketing officer.

Sanjay Gupta, Star India's chief operating officer, admits the new league was "a big shot in the dark". Kabaddi is just one of the big bets being made on sports other than cricket as Indian broadcasters try to expand the US$7.7-billion Indian television market.

The US$600-million (FY 2014) Multi-Screen Media (Sony), which owns the IPL, is investing in the World Kabaddi League, FIFA, the Euro Cup and Ultimate Fighting Championship, a mixed martial arts event, among several other sports.

"Young people are following a whole lot of sports outside of cricket, online. Football and fight sports are popular. When we got NBA three years back the feeling was that basketball could not get very popular in India. But viewership has risen week after week," NP Singh, Multi Screen Media's chief executive, points out.

"There is certainly a momentum on other sports," agrees K. Satyanarayana, R.K. Swamy Media Group's senior vice president.

Now, "all sports channels are looking at sports outside of cricket," Singh says.

In October 2014, within a few months of Kabaddi, Star launched the Hero Indian Super League football.

The US$743-million Zee Entertainment has also been trying to crack other sports. Rajesh Sethi, chief executive of Zee's Ten Sports, says the firm is investing in WWE, football, golf and several other sports. Most broadcasters now have several channels each dedicated to sports other than cricket. That may be surprising. In spite of advertisers such as Fevicol, Pro Kabaddi League, which took one year and US$34 million in investment, did not make money.

Cricket generates 90% of the chatter, eyeballs and money going to sports channels in India. According to consulting firm Media Partners Asia (MPA), of the US$641 million that sports broadcasting in India generated in advertising and pay revenues in 2013, US$575 million went to cricket. Only US$66 million went to all other sports combined. Of this, football got a nice chunk with wrestling, tennis and hockey coming next.

On the other hand, on the back of the IPL, viewership of cricket has doubled from 122 million in 2008 to over 254 million in 2014.

The highest estimate for 10 seconds of advertising on Kabaddi is about US$800. A cricket test match with a much lower viewership would get US$5,600 or more. The IPL 2014 clocked US$34,000 per 10 seconds, says one analyst.

"Everyone (in other sports) is bleeding," says MPA vice president, Mihir Shah. Gupta dismisses these fears. "We haven't made any money on it (Kabaddi) so far nor did the leagues and franchisees. Any business, in entertainment or otherwise has a three- to five-year period over which it makes money. This (Kabaddi) is no different," he adds.

Of the US$3.4 billion that Star plans to invest into sports, 30%-40% is earmarked for sports other than cricket. That is roughly twice the size of the entire sports broadcast industry in India.

Can this change how audiences and advertisers view sports? Can it increase the share of other sports in television revenues? There is a lot of evidence to suggest that some focus, marketing and investment into other sports does pay off, though not on the same scale as cricket.

When Sony secured National Basketball Association (NBA) rights three years ago, popular opinion was that it was doomed. But viewership has risen from 14 million to 50 million over the last two years. Total viewership for basketball now stands at a massive 89 million people.

"When we were launching our sports channel we researched what the youth (14-25) is following online and that is what prompted us to look at sports beyond cricket," Singh says. He points to last year's FIFA World Cup, which Sony broadcast. "Though it was in a different time zone in Brazil, people (Indians) stayed up to watch it because it was good quality football," he says.

Much of the expansion in entertainment happened by expanding the variety of programming on offer - from soaps to reality shows and lifestyle.Currently, "of the three hours that Indians spend watching TV, only seven minutes on average are spent watching sports. In the U.S. and U.K., of six hours watching television, about 45 minutes are spent on sports. There are societies that are into playing sports, we are not. If a kid wants to play, we push him to studies. There are no facilities. That is the reality of where we are. We need to change the way sports is looked at and played in India," Gupta says.

That explains why broadcasters are looking at sports beyond cricket. Football is a hot favourite and the investment is beginning to show results. Football has grown from 96 million viewers in 2008 to 215 million in 2014.

Star decided to invest in Kabaddi in addition to football. Unlike tennis or badminton, Kabaddi needs no props, no equipment. It can be played anywhere and by anyone. That explains why there are about 3,000 Kabaddi clubs in India, Gupta says.

Much of the new investment doesn't come without a lot of heartburn, the biggest being the lack of revenue growth.

Considering that cricket sees huge growth year-on-year, why do these large numbers of people watching other sports not translate into a bigger share of the sports pie?There are four reasons for this, observers say.

LV. Krishnan, chief executive of Indian rating agency TAM Media Research says cricket viewing "is more evolved. Many of us have played the game and have an understanding of it. In other sports there hasn't been such transcendency from playing to watching. This changes your enjoyment of the game on television. Also many other games are very good at the international level but not at local level," he says.

The ISL for instance put off a lot of people with the quality of football, especially since it came soon after FIFA. "The key issue in sports has always been lack of infrastructure and investment in grassroots. The success of the broadcaster depends on how much they push local franchisees to invest in the ecosystem. For instance, IMG-Reliance which owns ISL, has a clause that team owners have to invest a percentage of revenues into improving facilities. What ISL has done in year one is make eight quality football grounds available to players," Shah points out.

Making sports television friendly becomes tougher for purely local sports. "It took one year (to get Pro Kabaddi off the ground) because nobody could produce it. We had to bring in people who had done contact sports, knew the camera work needed, train the commentators," Gupta says.

As various sports start competing for viewership, their production quality is bound to improve.

The second reason why monetisation is an issue is the nature of the game. "Cricket allows frequent short breaks and therefore noticeability of an ad increases. It helps build reach. Other sports are shorter, so the ad revenue potential gets restrictive," points out Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director, Madison World.

Third, "almost all sports are solo or peer-to peer viewing. Therefore there is a lot of out-of-home viewing," Krishnan says, adding: "Digital has a huge role to play on viewership, engagement and also the ability to monetise. FIFA 2014 got 20 million page views on Sony Liv alone. That is a big number considering it reached an average of 53 million people on TV. Digital could get bigger for other sports, but the monetisability on digital is pathetic. So broadcasters are wary about investing in it and that in turn restricts the amount of money they can make. This makes for a chicken and egg situation on digital".

The fourth is that "people get into cricket because you can become a hero overnight. It may not necessarily be for the love of the game. That kind of glamour is not there in hockey or in Kabaddi, which is a huge game beyond the metros," points out Satyanarayana. That in turn affects how advertisers and TV operators view these sports.Clearly, it will be a long time before Kabaddi or football create the kind of superstars that cricket has in India. But the process has begun.

twitter. com/vanitakohlik ContentAsia Issue 1, 2015