India's Rishabh Pant, left, is congratulated by his captain Rohit Sharma after playing a shot for four runs against Ireland during an ICC Men's T20 World Cup cricket match at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in Westbury, New York.
Credit: PTI Photo
By Satviki Sanjay
Global firms are splurging on advertising for the upcoming cricket match between India and Pakistan held in the US, tapping into the spending power of the South Asian diaspora.
The rival countries are set to play each other on June 9 in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in New York’s Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, a venue erected in three months using modular stands from the Formula 1 Grand Prix arena in Las Vegas. The tournament is being held in the US for the first time ever, and games will also be played in Caribbean nations.
The clash has added significance given Pakistan on Thursday fell to a shock defeat to the US, a major boost to the host nation playing in their first ever World Cup and ranked 18th in the world behind Nepal and the UAE.
Ad slots for the game could sell for as much as 4 million rupees ($48,000) for 10 seconds, said Santosh N., managing partner at D&P Advisory, which provides sports valuation services. “The India-Pakistan game always commands a premium.”
A 10-second slot for India games would be fetching about 2 million rupees on average, he added. In comparison, a Super Bowl ad is a reported $6.5 million for 30 seconds, and about £400,000 ($511,000) for 30 seconds during the 2022 football World Cup for UK advertising.
Multinational firms like Emirates Group, Saudi Aramco and Coca-Cola Co. are among the companies sponsoring the monthlong tournament. The matches have also been scheduled to coincide with peak viewership hours in South Asian countries. For example, the India-Pakistan match will be played at 10:30 am in New York on Sunday, when it will be evening in India.
During the Cricket World Cup held in India last year, a 10-second slot was estimated to cost 3 million rupees. The higher pricing compared to the T20 World Cup reflects the much greater hype for the sport when held in India, according to Chandrashekar Mantha, partner at Deloitte India. He added that some advertising budget will already have been allocated to the Indian Premier League, which concluded two weeks ago.
Governing body the International Cricket Council is trying to draw wider global attention to the sport ahead of its inclusion in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Cricket already has a ready fan base in the US in the form of large diaspora from cricket-loving countries in South Asia, and Indians in tech have been instrumental in shoring up support for the sport.
“Exciting to see my favorite sport growing globally,” said Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai on X on June 2 ahead of the start of the tournament.
Meanwhile, tech leaders including Microsoft Corp.’s Satya Nadella and Adobe Inc.’s Shantanu Narayen, as well as former WhatsApp executive Neeraj Arora, have invested in Major League Cricket in the US, which is played in the same shorter format of 20 overs as the T20 franchise. The league’s inaugural game was played last year in Texas.
Indians in the US are among the wealthiest ethnic groups in the country, with a median income of about $120,000.
The tournament so far has been off to an underwhelming start, with teams playing to near-empty stadiums. Players from South Africa and India also criticized the pitch at Nassau County as being unsuitable for the T20 format.
“The real action begins from the Super 8 round,” said Ayaz Memon, a journalist and commentator who has tracked the sport over several decades, referring to the stage of the tournament when stronger teams start playing each other.
As an indicator of the level of excitement for the India-Pakistan clash, tickets were 200 times oversubscribed, according to the ICC. Nadella told Bloomberg TV he will be attending if he is able to get tickets for the game.
“The group chats went crazy” when the tickets went on sale, said Debarghya Das, a 31-year-old venture capitalist based in San Francisco. “Everyone was talking about it. Nobody I knew got it from that lottery.”
A ticket, originally priced at $6 to $25, is fetching as much as $3,500 on the secondary market, Das added.
Rohail Asad, a 23-year-old software engineer who moved to the US eight years ago, will be watching the game at home as he was unable to score a ticket.
“They’re all Indians and I’m Pakistani,” Asad said. “It should be exciting.”