Cricket

Advertising is an effective medium of publicity, so much so that it has taken over the game of cricket, much like Bollywood has.

What is confusing is, when did the game of cricket become all about the advertisements? Every player is endorsed with somebody, a ball running to the boundary and the first thing you notice is “MICROMAX”.

The entire IPL last season was nauseating with the number of advertisements; the catches to the boundaries to the cheerleaders were promoting some brand or the other.

It would suffice to say to that the telecast in TEN SPORTS this time in the India-South Africa series was ludicrous. Not only were advertisements being shown before the over was completed by stuffing the ad in before even the replay was shown and finally the most annoying off all, the pop up advertisements in the middle of the over where a product would jump out of the field on to the screen and go off just in time for the next delivery. Not to forget the reduction of the screen to advertise a service with an ugly dog or a Japanese song.

Thankfully, many consumers complained about this nonsense and Ten Sports was questioned about the violation on the Indian Government’s advertising codes by the Information and Broadcast Ministry. “A show-cause notice has been sent to Ten Cricket channel regarding the violation of Rule 7 (10) of the Advertising Code as prescribed in the Cable Television Networks Rules 1994 which provides ‘all advertisement should be clearly distinguishable from the programme and should not in any manner interfere with the programme viz, use of lower part of screen to carry captions, static or moving alongside the programme,” Raghu Menon, the secretary of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry which formulates rules for broadcasting and advertising in the country as reported by ESPN.

For the first time, we would be happy with something the government has done.

These kinds of telecasts will not be taken lightly if done during the World Cup as cricket fans will quite frankly “loose it”. The Indian team as well as advertisers should know better by now having faced the wrath the last time when they heavily promoted the Indian cricket team as winners of the World Cup and the result was them returning with nothing but disgrace and the advertisers incurring losses.

Initially we all thought that ads were breaks to go take a piss or get something to eat in the middle of programs/ matches, now it is so much more. If one more ad interrupts the play, we should never use that product or service.

Tags: Advertisements, Advertising, Channel, Cricket, India, Indian Premier League, IPL, Micromax, Ten Cricket, Ten Sports, World Cup