APRIL 20208Consumer is and should remain the KingType a message A few weeks back, I was read-ing this blogpost by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan revisiting a game of cricket that, to my mind, changed the fabric of Indian sports. It was a recollection of one of the greatest exhibitions of batting and leadership cricket fans could have seen; Kapil Dev's 175 against Zimbabwe in the group stage of the 1983 World Cup, which wasn't recorded or broadcast either.This display from Kapil Dev was the foundation stone of the eventual glory, of India win-IN MY OPINIONBy Rajesh Sethi, Managing Director, NBA IndiaIn his expansive career, Rajesh has built some great companies in diverse sectors with startups, global multinationals and turnaround businessesning the World Cup. Even after 36 years, that match at Turnbridge Wells is still fresh in the minds of Indian fans without having any footage to look at, which says that cricket in any form is still revered. The broadcast team, till date, would be ruing for running another match over this.Those were the days when it was all about the sport. Then the action was live on just one national broadcaster and radio. Standing outside an electronics shop to get a glimpse or rushing home from work or school was the norm. Now imagine, if Kapil Dev played that whirlwind of an innings and won the World Cup in this era of digital explosion, the hype around it would be much higher.Today, the advent of digitization is giv-ing fans a chance to experience a sport in a manner never heard of. From one-sided viewing, fans are now actively engaging with content through fantasy gaming, merchan-dise, pop-culture and movie-integration and much more. The mobile phone today is no more seen as a second screen and is a preferred mode of consumption making it a personalized experience. A statement released by Inter-national Cricket Council (ICC) said that the 2019 World Cup semifinal between India and New Zealand set a new world record of high-est-ever concurrent views on Hotstar with a peak of 25.3 million.While live action remains the top prior-ity for fans, fantasy gaming platforms like Dream11, Fantain, HalaPlay, CricPlay, Mobile Premier League, My11Circle and many more allow fans to go beyond the sport and engage minute-by-minute along with their friends, family and co-workers and compete against each other for their prediction expertise. The upward demand for smartphones in India complements the extraordinary con-sumption of content, both of which can be attributed to the low data cost in the coun-try. According to a study, an average Indian consumes two and a half hours of video con-tent per day which is expected to double to five hours by 2023. The data cost in India is $0.02 per gigabyte compared to $1.5 in the US, $1 in Philippines, $0.87 in China.All these factors have empowered the sports fan of today. At the NBA, we always
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