One of India's largest mobile operators, Airtel, has won the deal to be the official SMS partner for Star TV's Kaun Banega Crorepati's second coming, which will hit Indian television screens on August 5.
The deal has been struck in the region of a whopping Rs 40 crore-plus (over Rs 400 million), according to market sources. Airtel is the brand owned by Sunil Mittal's company Bharti TeleVenture.
Airtel officials could not be reached for comment on the deal.
KBC has been the most-popular show in Indian television history. Megastar Amitabh Bachchan will return as the anchor of the show. And the prize money this time has been doubled prize to Rs 2 crore (Rs 20 million).
Quizmaster Siddhartha Basu's Synergy Communications will, like the last time, handle the prime-time show again.
KBC was the brainchild of Sameer Nair, programme chief of Star TV. The programme that took India by a storm was launched on July 2, 2000 and ran for 18 months till December 21, 2001.
KBC, the Indianised version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, rewrote the way television programming was done in India and, in the process, made mega bucks for Star TV -- and for some winners too.
Star TV plans to aggressively campaign for the promotion of the programme, saying that views will be urged to participate with the promise that in return they will get double of what they hoped for. Star expects to rake in close to Rs 250 crore (Rs 2.50 billion) in just advertisement-related revenues with the second edition of KBC.
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For Airtel, the deal makes sense because this time around the entry level question to the competition will be shown on the Star Plus channel during prime time and viewers would have the option of answering via an SMS.
This, apart from the fact that Airtel is an associate sponsor of the programme, would mean that it gets promoted across all the Star channels.
It is understood that Star made the same proposition to other cellular service providers, but the high cost made the others back out.
Star is pulling out all the stops for KBC's second avatar. It has already roped in Nokia as an associate sponsor and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has come in as its landline partner.
According to sources in the industry, viewers who want to participate and do not have an Airtel connection would have to dial into a landline number with the answer.
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Star apparently has proposed eight associate sponsors, who will have to pay close to Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million) each. Sponsors will be assured of being present in the sum total of close to 7,300 promos that will be on air across the Star network.
The break-up of these advertisement spots across channels would be -- 4,165 on Star Plus, 630 on Star Gold, 840 on Star World, 840 on Star Utsav and 410 on The History Channel. The advertisements will incorporate the branding of each of the eight sponsors, plus 60 seconds of commercial time per episode which adds up to a total of 5,100 seconds across the 85 episodes.
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