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Sun TV Network is contemplating launching a new channel and is also working on its entry into other regions.
The ₹2,963-crore company is evaluating strategies for its entry into Marathi and Bengali markets, which will mark its expansion beyond the South. It is also working on launching a new general entrainment channel soon, said a report of ICICI Securities, quoting the company management’s remarks during the fourth quarter investors’ conference call.
The company management told analysts that their IPL franchisee would achieve break-even during this fiscal thanks to a higher pool of revenue.
“The viability of this model has gone up on account of much higher spending by the broadcaster to win IPL rights compared to the earlier one,” said the report.
Start of digitisation
Industry analysts indicate that the start of digitisation in Tamil Nadu will augur well for Sun TV as the completion of this exercise may lead to the company fetching strong additional revenue over the next couple of years.
The Sun TV management pointed out that 9-10 million homes in Tamil Nadu were yet to be digitised. It hoped that the digitisation in the State would be completed by the end of the current calendar year. It is confident of garnering incremental subscription revenue of about ₹400 crore post the Tamil Nadu digitisation.
Analysts note that competitive intensity was rising in Tamil Nadu after the launch of Colors Tamil and aggressive content strategy by Star and Zee in the Tamil genre.
However, Sun TV maintained its dominant position in Tamil Nadu with an average market share of about 46 per cent, almost 2.5 times the second player (Star Vijay) during Q4 of FY18.
Sun TV is planning to spend ₹400-450 crore on acquiring movie satellite rights during this fiscal.
It has also projected a doubled-digit ad revenue growth for the current fiscal. In FY18, its ad revenue grew by about 12 per cent, which came after a negative growth in FY17 due to the effects of demonetisation.
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