Is the Olympics worth marketing in Indonesia?

By Partha Kabi

The Beijing Olympics are in the headline news everyday and will remain till the end of this mega sports event. However, given the low interest levels in some countries like Japan (as per your article in Media magazine) and Indonesia (and possibly in some other countries), one wonders if it is really a marketable event in these countries.

Lets take a look at the fourth largest populated country in the world – Indonesia. Sport has never been as popular as music or sinetrons in Indonesia. Having said that, specific sport such as soccer and badminton do generate adequate viewership among Indonesian TV viewers (the TVR’s for the Euro Cup and the Thomas/Uber cup bear testimony to that).

However, when it came to the biggest sports event – The Beijing Olympics 2008, sadly
enough, there were no takers. None of the big private TV stations were prepared to
telecast this mega event claiming it was not financially profitable. Which in other
words means (based on past history), this event does not generate enough viewership
and thereby very few sponsors and advertisers.

Thankfully, the Indonesian government decided to telecast this event live on TVRI.
However, the numbers for the Opening Ceremony were not that encouraging. Given the fact that TVRI is not a widely watched TV station and that very few people were aware that the Olympics will be telecast live on TVRI, yet, an event as big as the Olympics deserved better than a 0.6 TVR for the Opening Ceremony. The best match in the Euro Cup got 6.3 TVR, the Thomas/Uber cup got 9.4 TVR and even the F1 got a 1.4 TVR.

Given these numbers, I would not blame the big TV channels for not buying the rights to telecast this mega event. After all marketing communications start with the consumer and if the consumer is not interested, the product should not be forced onto the consumer. It will be important to see the TVR’s for the rest of the Olympic period before making a judgement on this issue. I am sure Indonesian interest levels would have been high during the badminton matches where Indonesia struck gold at the Olympics.

It will also be interesting to compare the interest levels in the Olympics versus cricket in the second largest populated country – India or for that matter Olympics versus baseball in the US and New Zealand or Olympics versus soccer in Brazil.

Partha Kabi is MD of ZenithOptimedia Indonesia