How did MTV wind up broadcasting La Liga

The M in MTV, says Anshul Ailawadi, the enterprise head of youth, music and English leisure at Viacom18, stands for all of those – “madness, matinee and moolah” going past musical heydays of Madonna in India. The M may’ve added ‘Messi’ too this 12 months to MTV’s iconography, save the soccer star’s departure at first of the season from Barcelona.
The former music channel “transcended boundaries” and in its twenty fifth 12 months dribbled its approach into broadcasting Spanish soccer, maybe the primary such foray for the erstwhile music biggie world-over. LaLiga, which dipped its toes into unconventional broadcasting with the Facebook streaming deal three seasons in the past, is now on MTV.
While the Messi-Ronaldo rivalry headed out of the El Classico sphere, LaLiga was certain to be delicately poised when promoting its broadcast rights. Ailawadi remembers how the deal was sealed and MTV got here on board after the vibe matched with Jose Antonio Cachaza, India managing director of LaLiga.
“LaLiga had launched the tender rights, and a presentation was made to Jose. We talked down the road from our office over drinks. And came back with a pilot bridge on streaming. It sounded great and after some very late calls, we closed it,” he says.
Cachaza talks about MTV addressing his doubts about fleeting consideration spans of younger followers, who couldn’t watch a video for “more than 2 minutes”.
“But that complaint basically meant that Netflix didn’t exist! Which wasn’t true. The MTV proposal fit exactly. At LaLiga we realised they can do things we can’t. Their social media is more cool. We need to be more serious and ‘institutional’. As soon as our digital teams saw their pitch, they said ‘this is really wild,’” Cachaza remembers of the unlikely tie-up.
THE MESSI SPLITSVILLA
Lionel Messi throughout his ultimate press convention at Barcelona. (Reuters)
While MTV was prepping its promos, making an attempt to maintain genuine followers glad whereas making an attempt to hook the curiosity of recent ones, La Liga’s almighty Splitsvilla was taking part in out in Basque land. Messi would ultimately announce his departure to Paris Saint Germain, as MTV started summoning the subsequent roster of faces to headline their broadcast.
Cachaza insists the basics will be certain that LaLiga as a property stays related regardless of lacking Messi.
“To lose Messi was no news,” says the league’s consultant in India, calmly. “Clubs stay. Players come and go, and Messi himself said this. Clubs remain relevant. Of course, we need stars,” he provides, claiming that Spanish soccer has seen each prime star besides Pele and Franz Beckenbauer who by no means left their respective nations. “(Johan) Cryuff, (Diego) Maradona, (Zinedine) Zidane…” he reels off.
Cachaza lashed out towards ‘financial doping’ of some golf equipment who regardless of the emptying funds, continued to spend copiously in inflated participant shopping for markets.
“How much harm has been caused, PSG will know, while respecting no rules of financial fairplay,” he says, including that regardless of shedding 45 p.c in broadcast revenues, states had been pumping in cash into state-owned golf equipment which may splash out 100 million Euro buys.
The Messi exit was inevitable, he added.
“Maybe two years later. Best to start moving on sooner,” he opines, including that each Real Madrid and Barcelona had been in rebuilding levels, whereas Atletico Madrid had sufficient idiosyncrasies to carry onto its followers.
The Indian market had appeared fiendishly star-centric in instances of David Beckham. “But Manchester United fans from India were following the club even when their results were dismal. So fans are realising,” he provides.
AIM TV FOR NEW START
MTV is perhaps the newest entrant – in addition they have Serie A of their bouquet – however sports activities broadcast is present process a large flux with rights getting fragmented throughout conventional TV channels, OTT and on-line streams. More interactive with followers, the previous couple of years have seen soccer itself wildly mushrooming on newer platforms and experimenting with interfaces. MTV itself had lulled the music to ambient and gotten extra chatty and catty with reveals like Splitsvilla and Roadies.
Unexpectedly reducing in from the soccer wings, MTV struck a chord with outdated followers. “We had a very strong Hindi speaking fan base last few years. Now in the first few weeks of LaLiga, we have reactivated our southern base: Kerala,” Ailawadi says. In all these years, MTV has additionally corrected its gender skew to 55:45 male to feminine, and boast of a 38 p.c rural viewership, who they now plan to attach with Spanish soccer.
Pre-season promos have sought to – somewhat confusingly – underline their dedication to genuine ‘sports broadcast’ soccer with their “zero masala, pure football” marketing campaign, whereas additionally leveraging Karan Johar and Rohit Sharma’s attain to level in the direction of recreation instances. Multi-pronged broad-basing of followers is occurring concurrently with setting up the post-Messi world: leaning on younger expertise like Pedri, Frenkie de Jong, Jiao Felix, Lainez, Isak and Vinicius, whereas hoping Jan Oblak, Luis Suarez and the incoming Sergio Aguero can crank up new assist.
So whilst they gently ease newbies into what a ‘nutmeg’ means and never make soccer too intimidating for them, there’s a concurrent effort to maintain broadcast advanced for the genuine followers.
LaLiga is probably at its most weak phases in a very long time, with Messi gone and an ultimatum served to the Big Two to not break ranks chasing the Super League dazzle. The MTV deal is thence each a decrease key hum for the final decade’s hottest soccer property, but additionally an apt early departure in a scarily altering world.