Going vocal in vernacular

Finally, my mother has started watching cricket on TV,” laughs Vijay Bharadwaj when you ask him about the growth of Kannada cricket commentary on TV. Bharadwaj, the former India cricketer who has become one of the most popular faces and voices on the Star Sports Kannada channel, may well have been speaking for thousands of people across the state.

‘Going vernacular’ has become the most critical marketing strategy in recent years for private sports channels looking to penetrate deeper into an India that has been craving for content in its native languages. For decades, cricket commentary on TV has largely been served in English. In a country with 22 official languages, English’s domination was unreal. We may attribute it to the fact that the game was invented by the British and the lexicon of the game was naturally in English, but no serious attempt was made to change the status quo until the ambitious private players looked at expanding their existing reach. Given its size, India offered humungous potential for growth but as vast as the country is, it is mindbogglingly diverse. To tap into this market, one needed to go local. Star Sports network pioneered the idea in 2015 by launching a full-fledged Hindi network, whose success inspired them to foray into Tamil and then the Kannada and Telugu markets. They now have channels in Marathi, Bengali and Gujarati as well.

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“When I look at the numbers, IPL-16 opening day viewership (CSK vs GT), 65 per cent is in Hindi, 14 in English, 11 in Tamil, 5 in Telugu and 4 in Kannada. So, English, which used to be 100 per cent 10 years back, is just 14 per cent now,” says Sanjog Gupta, Head – Sports, Disney Star.

Credit: DH Graphic

Gupta, however, feels English is here to stay despite its dwindling share.

“While English has shrunk in relative share, the total viewership for English has remained flat,” he points out. “There is a certain section of the audience which still listens to English, which is why it’s part of our mix. Also, we will never knock off English because we produce feed for the world as the IPL is watched in many other countries. Another point is, there are a lot of bilingual watchers in India like Hindi-English, Tamil-English et al. In terms of where vernacular is going, I think its viewership is only growing.”

In the Hindi-speaking market, according to BARC, the viewership share for the IPL’s opening match stood at 91 per cent, with 7 per cent watching in English. The figures were equally impressive for non-Hindi speaking regions. In undivided AP, Telugu commentary was consumed by 88 per cent (English 8 per cent and Hindi 3 per cent). In Tamil Nadu, 93 per cent watched in Tamil and the rest in English.

Karnataka, Gupta emphasises, is a unique market which has viewership for all major languages.

While Kannada was consumed the most at 65 per cent, English had significant consumers at 19 per cent. Hindi, Tamil and Telugu were watched by 7, 5 and 4 per cent respectively.

It’s no wonder that other prominent sports channels operating out of India are investing big in producing content in languages specific to particular regions. Sony Sports Network offers vernacular commentary across sports in Tamil and Telugu, besides Hindi. While Sony didn’t share the data on their regional viewership, Viacom 18’s move to livestream the ongoing Indian Premier League in 12 vernacular languages on Jio Cinema reveals that these enterprises have finally realised that for all its obsession with English, India, outside of its globalised urban landscape, is still steadfastly local.

“Our understanding of how strong the affinity for truly local content can be came actually from what had already been seen on the entertainment side,” offers Gupta.

“So most of our mass entertainment was already deeply local. Sports was the only mass content genre which was still being presented in English. Our belief was to grow sport, or cricket specifically. If we felt that cricket still had headroom to grow, we needed to take the sport deeper. And the only way sport can grow deeper is if we present it in a language you engage the sport in. So, when communities come together and discuss the game, it’s largely in the language of their choice. Whether the amateurs, semi-professionals or professionals come together to play, the language of expression of the local language. So, sport is inherently local.

“That was our fundamental belief that on one side, when we focussed on the audience, we saw how strong the affinity for local content is in their local language and with their cultural nuances. On the other side, we saw how sport tends to be deeply local. The way you experience sport in your neighbourhood or with your friends or in your office would be different if you were in Kolkata or Chennai or Mumbai... That was the insight with which we launched Hindi,” he explains.

Master stroke

While the idea was a master stroke, challenges were aplenty, the biggest being to get the audience to change their behaviour.

“This journey started 10 years ago with the Hindi network, and it took us four years after that to launch our Tamil network,” begins Gupta. “Although we were producing Tamil commentary, launching a full-fledged network took us four years because we wanted to establish Hindi. But more than establishing Hindi, we wanted to establish the fact that sport is genuinely better experienced in a language of your choice. And it wasn’t until 2019 that we launched Telugu and Kannada.”

The perception, Gupta feels, of vernacular being inferior to English discouraged people from watching the Hindi channel at the start.

“Initially, when we launched, our Hindi commentary was perceived to be inferior despite having A-list talent (as commentators),” he points out. “There was almost this prejudice which was largely on the account of perhaps the legacy bias the consumers had. The sport has been presented in English for so long that to watch it in Hindi seemed like a step down. And the biggest challenge for us was to change the perception of cricket being presented in a vernacular language from being inferior to genuinely relatable.

“Driving that acceptance was the biggest challenge because we have all grown up listening to English commentary and suddenly when it is being presented in Hindi, there is a discomfort to change. That’s what we faced... Initially, the response to Hindi or for that matter Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, was not positive because it’s just so different from what you have experienced till then. It took us four years to get people to accept Hindi as, if not superior, an equal product as English.”

It's not just the channels that had to change their approach. Even for the commentators, it was time to adapt - learn some and unlearn a bit.

"Obviously, you will have to do things differently in the sense that you have to get a command over the (local) language," says former India opener WV Raman, who is one of the most popular voices on Tamil sports channels. "In English, you normally tend to be very formal whereas in regional languages, it's a bit informal or colloquial. You use a lot of slang and mix a lot of English into it. The point is that you have to ensure you establish a sort of hold on the formal way of communication in regional languages which is understood by most people."

Raman, who feels it is easy to establish the emotional connection in the language of your choice, says the Southern market has a lot to offer in terms of revenue.

"The bigger picture here is, all these channels that have already established themselves above the Vindhyas, they also need to extend their reach. That is also a factor -- there is a commercial angle to it."

With so many channels jumping on to the vernacular bandwagon, there will be a huge demand for qualified personnel behind the mic. Ensuring both quantity and quality could be a challenge. Poor content can drive away the audience, notwithstanding the affinity to a language.

“We genuinely believe in quality over quantity,” insists Gupta. “Which is why we took four years to launch the Tamil channel after Hindi and another two years to launch Kannada and Telugu. When we present the most loved sport in this country in the language with cultural nuances, which we want to make as relatable as possible, it is at no point inferior or the quality seems to be lacking. That’s a given, which is why all our talent and producers actually undergo at least 6-8 months of a workshop before they get into live programming.”

While Star Sports are obviously the pioneers, others are also looking for their share in the regional pie as they go vocal about local.