Broadcasters to lose a fortune and for advertisers its a waste of money as India has lost the World Cup

India has lost to Sri Lanka. Somehow our nation’s self-esteem was tied up with winning the World Cup. And the nation is in mourning. But what about the money staked on the World Cup? Well, it has decreased substantially and television broadcasters and advertisers are down in the dumps. But this was not really a big surprise, not after India lost to Bangla Desh.

Well, I guess there are experts who are going to do a post-mortem and they will do it thoroughly. But from the point of view a layman and a person who is not obsessed with cricket (I did not watch the match last night) or the cricketing gods, I never felt for a moment that we stood a good chance. I think it was an objective assessment (not cynical or overly optimistic) because I am not emotionally involved with cricket. I felt so because we had too many players who are way past their peak and others are yet to reach it. Four players are in fact due to retire – Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and Kumble and others like Dhoni, Sreesanth, Karthik, Patel, Pathan, Uthappa have never ever played in the World Cup.

Inspite of that advertisers were keeping their fingers crossed. And now they are set to lose Rs 150 crores. (Rs 1 crore is 230521 USD by today’s exchange rate) As this news report said:

…an early Indian exit suddenly means that advertising in the World Cup telecast may not be worth the money. Sources in advertising agencies say a 10-second slot, which was sold between Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 3.5 lakh for matches involving India in the Super 8 stage, may be forced down to Rs 1 lakh if India fail to qualify. This may mean a drop of up to Rs 150 crore in advertising revenue for the broadcaster. Currently, the rates are Rs 1.25-1 .30 lakh for matches not featuring India. This may drop to Rs 1 lakh or even less in the event of an early exit.

Advertisers have been jittery ever since India lost to Bangla Desh. Cricketweblog.com said:

There is disquiet in the advertising industry in the country…the advertisers fear that their big investments may not give them returns worth a smile. One of the primary reasons that they need India to do well in mega event is that ad slots have been sold in India-centric packages

But hey this is a game. Some we lose and lose badly. There is always a next time and we can learn lessons from the defeat. That is why it makes me really sick when so-called cricket fans go crazy like they did in Patna, Bihar, after the first defeat. One day they were conducting pujas for the Indian team and the next moment they were burning the effigies of the Indian players!

I wonder what they will do now that India has crashed out of the World Cup? Attack the players if they could? Oh yes, we could console ourselves by saying that these kind of incidents only happen in some places, but we should all be ashamed. Protesters should be severely dealt with and given a jail sentence. Why don’t the state governments where these incidents happen take any action? In the past fans have attacked Kaif’s house and recently destroyed the boundary wall of Dhoni’s under-construction house. Its a different thing if an odd crazed fan behaved like this…but a group of people behaving like this in public? Why do we as a nation tolerate this?

Update (evening): Security has been increased for all cricketers due to fears that they might be harmed. In fact effigies of the players were burnt in several places across the country. What a shame.

(Pics from the bbc and patna daily)