Advertising overkill on Indian sports channels

I found an un-official live stream of the recent ICC Champions Trophy from ESPN India and was amazed by the amount of advertising Indian viewers have to put up with on what is a Pay TV channel.

At the end of every over they cram in 2 commercials sometimes nearly missing the first ball of the next over. At the break after the first innings at least half the time is taken up with commercials, sponsored features which include a commercial, Promos for the broadcast sponsors and associate sponsors (a large number). Plus a Union Bank graphic came up everytime a replay was shown during the match.

If you click on the link below you will see screen captures I took to try and illustrate all this.. Incidentally the guests during the half time show were Former English Cricketer Graeme Hick and former Australian Cricketer Geoff Lawson.

http://picasaweb.google.com/stuart.fanning/CricketICCChampionsTrophy2009CommercialAspectsOfESPNIndiaSCoverageIllustrated#

Click on pictures to enlarge them.

Think they get scrolling ads during their dramas too - very annoying.

Licence fee objectors take note.

I hope ITV don't get any ideas!

I've often thought about the whole ESPN/STAR Sports operation, I do agree there's too many ads and sponsorship going on, they are closely joined to Sky Sports so they get the best feeds but ruin it for the end customer, but I guess Indians are so used to it, they don't know any better like we do.

Does anyone know where they are broadcasting from, as they are many ESPN/Star Sports operations.

This advertising overkill is with ESPN Star Sports India. Their ESPN channel broadcasted the Champions Trophy in India. Star Sports Asia which screened the event in many other Asian markets had relatively few commercials and filled a lot of commercial breaks with programme promos.

Here's some screen captures from the current International Cricket tournament as presented to Indian viewers by Star Sports India.

http://picasaweb.google.com/stuart.fanning/CricketAirtelChampionsLeague2009CommercialAspectsStarSportsIndiaSCoverage#

Click on pictures to enlarge.

Good grief that's awful, very bizarre considering they are producing the match feed yet to their own customers they completely ruin it with ads.

Here's what NEO Cricket channel (part of the Nimbus organization) does during the current ODI Cricket series between India and Australia.

http://picasaweb.google.com/stuart.fanning/CricketIndiaAustraliaOneDayIntns2009CommercialAspectsOfNEOCricketIndiaSCoverage#

Click on pictures to enlarge.