Anurag Dahiya - the ICC CCO on growing reach and revenue in new and uncompetitive markets

0:04Anurag Dahiya:Hello and welcome to the Leaders Worth Knowing podcast, the sports industry show from Leaders where we talk to the people worth knowing in the business of sport this week. I'm James Emmett. I'm the editorial director here at Leaders and I'm just back from Bangalore in India where I spoke to the guest for this week's episode, Anurag Dahiya. Anurag is the chief commercial officer at the ICC, the International Cricket Council. It's a position he's held since March 2020. He's got long, distinguished history in the sports and media industry. He ran content and ad sales at Singtel before joining the ICC.

0:48Anurag Dahiya:And before that, he spent almost 14 years at ESPN Star Sports. Anurag was speaking at the Indian Sports Summit that we hosted alongside Royal Challengers Bangalore last week in India. And he covered a wide ranging list of topics on stage and together with me on the podcast, which we recorded in the green room as the mob following Virat Kohli onto stage moved away from us. We covered all sorts. Is there too much cricket? What the market dynamics are like in India? what do you do as a commercial operator at a rights holder when there isn't enough competition in a market where the newest, most exciting territories for cricket are.

1:35Anurag Dahiya:Obviously, a big focus on the US with the LA Olympics around the corner, women's cricket and the idea of unbundling and plenty more besides. This is Anurag Dahir. Thanks very much for being with me here in Bangalore. You've just got off stage here at the Indian Sports Summit. You off Virat Kohli on. How did it feel being a warm-up act for Virat? Yeah, that's the only time that'll ever happen, I think. Me going before Virat to bat. Yeah, you opened up for Virat. Yeah, I opened for Virat. You softened up the bowlers for him. Anirag, what's the main challenge for you right now when you think about the broad scope of what you have to do at the ICC?

2:19Anurag Dahiya:What's the number one challenge you're facing? I think, you know, the biggest opportunity is for us present also some challenges. Our biggest opportunity is in taking cricket to new markets. And that represents a challenge because traditionally there has not been any distribution in these markets, whether it's Japan or Indonesia or Thailand or Nepal or US. And so the challenge really that we've taken is to say, how can we take our mainstream coverage from our major events and customize it and regionalize it to wherever we are going and talking to fans? So in the US, that doesn't necessarily mean a different language, but it means a different style of coverage, you know, which doesn't presume a sophistication in terms of understanding what's happening necessarily on the field.

3:19Anurag Dahiya:You're dumbing it down for the Americans. It's not necessarily dumbing it down, but certainly trying to use vocabulary that they can more readily relate to. And also in the course of that, try and explain what's going on. But when you go to Japan or Thailand, our mainline English coverage is not going to cut it. You know, it'll work very nicely with the small expat populations who might be interested in cricket. But then we are doing a disservice to our goal, which is to go and expand it beyond these catchments. You know, the opportunity for us is that we've got very strong, well-ingrained expat communities throughout the world who are cricket-loving.

4:02Whether it's the South Asian diaspora, for example, they take cricket with them proudly wherever they go. And that's great for putting the seeds in. But then how do you multiply that following and how do you nurture that and get that going? So some of that is solved with technology. but a lot of that is also with our members coming to the fore in terms of just doing things on the grassroots whether it's you know coverage in language or indeed screening parties simple things like that and and that's something that we're trying and we're there's a bit of a trial and error going on at the moment and and that I feel I mean I wouldn't say it's a challenge I I think it's the most exciting opportunity we have in terms of growing our sport beyond what is normally associated with cricket, which is the top 10 or 12 countries where it is played and followed.

5:00Anurag Dahiya:You touched on a couple of those points in your session on stage just now that you're on with Peter Hutton and Fiona Harrell talking about the broad sweep of sports commercialization, media rights, sponsorship, where everything is going. You mentioned Japan specifically up there, and I think you talked about an OTT offering, ICC TV, is it? Yeah, yeah. Where is that product in its journey? We've seen at a kind of broader level that some original in-house rights holder OTTs, La Liga TV, FIFA TV, have either been folded or changed course. Yeah. Where are you in your journey? Look, with ICC TV, the ICC web and app, our focus very clearly was that we are not trying to become a new OTT player, which is suddenly going to become a new profit driver for us.

5:55with ICC.tv, the objective was to take back control of our rights in territories where we do not have mainstream broadcast coverage and open it up to our fans. You know, so what we did in 2022-23 when we did our deals was for the first time, We moved away from a single global deal into regional deals or sub-regional deals. And we carved out intentionally a number of geographies where we knew we could find a rights holder, but we also suspected that they wouldn't quite service the market the way it needs to be if we are going to grow this point. So continental Europe or Russia or China or Southeast Asia, Southern America, some parts of that, or Central America, some parts of that, you know, these are territories where we said we're going to hold back rights.

6:54And then we built ICC TV as a destination where we are not only carrying our marquee events, but we've now built a whole coverage plan of our pathways, which goes on to ICC TV. and it is content that really matters to these countries. So, you know, Nepalese fans in Nepal being able to watch Nepal playing Papua New Guinea or, you know, go to Vanuatu and playing there. There was no exposure for these events. With the Pathways coverage, we are able to now stream it into all these territories and that then actually become a great source of data for us where we started seeing certain territories light up.

7:38Whenever we were putting a marquee event, you suddenly see that Nepal was big. And Nepal is now actually, that was the first time we've done a broadcast licensing deal off the back of first having streamed there for a few years. So now there is a local television station, which is Kanthipur TV, which is actually taking our rights and putting on Nepalese commentary and putting it out on linear TV. But similarly, we saw Germany pop up or South Korea and Japan become, you know, they light up when there's a major event. And that told us that there was something going on. You know, okay, there is some pull for cricket in these markets.

8:20What can we do to give them content which will break through and keep feeding that trend? So that's where Japan, amongst others, is an interesting market for us. I mean, China is the other big one, frankly. We've done, for the first time, we did some Mandarin commentary, and that went on Duyin. And that's something that we want to keep on expanding.

8:44Anurag Dahiya:Do you know what Howzat is in Mandarin? You'll have to ask one of our commentators. We are having to develop a whole new dictionary. But, you know, I mean, China is clearly interested. There is the, it's 25 Chinese universities have cricket as part of their programs now. They are looking to introduce cricket in their national games, which will mean each province will have to have their own team. So that's a very exciting journey. And the least we can do as ICC is to now just open up content to that country and let them consume it. because especially with the Olympic inclusion, I think some of these countries have developed a much stronger interest in the sport, which, as I said, needs a little bit more of nurturing and looking after to just get it to the next stage.

9:33And eventually, hopefully, just as we've done a deal now in Nepal, we'll be able to do deals in Japan or in China. And right now, it's not about how much money we can make out of this. And that's where I think we differ from some of the OTT experiments elsewhere. We've gone in with eyes open. We're not trying to...

9:53Anurag Dahiya:You're going for eyeballs. We are going for eyeballs. We're using it as a development engine, which it is. And it's already giving us results in that space. Talk to me, if you will, about the role, Anurag. You've been in it, I think, since 2020? 2020, that's right. It strikes me that the chief revenue officer, the chief commercial officer of a major sports, global sports rights holder requires lots of skills. And I wonder what you consider your number one skill to be. What do you lean into most? Particularly in cricket, there's a lot of politics involved, right? It's not just a case of building a commercial proposition, selling it according to a sales process.

10:34Anurag Dahiya:Although, of course, I'm sure you do have to do that. there's running teams there's running multi-national multi-language teams there's calendar stakeholder management there's a lot of travel what would you pinpoint as a skill of yours that you've had to lean in on and develop to do the job successfully i think you know it's funny you mentioned the politics uh which i think you know every federation has its own levels of politics And I remember when I was being interviewed by the then chair, you know, he asked a similar question about, you know, competing interests and all that. And I remember saying that, you know, at the end of the day, if we've made everyone equally unhappy, we've done a good job.

11:18Yeah. So sometimes that skill of keeping everyone equally unhappy is important. But I think, you know, it's fortunately I've been exposed to organizations which were completely commercial businesses and now in what is essentially a not-for-profit organization. I've been able to, I think, bring in a lot of that sensibility of running it like a business. And I think that's most important because what happens, I think, in these environments is that you can become very comfortable very quickly. because, I mean, ultimately, if you were to break it down into the terms of a business, it's a very high margin business with very, very low cost.

11:57And, you know, it's a very, very high margin business and which can make you settle into a pattern of complacency. So I think what I enjoy doing the most is to challenge people about, you know, what we have done in the past and what can be. So we were just talking about the pathway events. I mean, that's a small and interesting example of challenging that status quo mentality because those events were not being covered at all. And I looked at that and said, you know, hang on, there's an opportunity here. There's something we're leaving on the table. Why are we not covering it? And the answer was that it's too expensive to cover everywhere in the world.

12:39So, well, why do we have to do a mainline 40 camera production everywhere? Yeah. Why can't it be a four-camera production with streams? So the ability to challenge, you know, and as operating people in businesses, we've done that throughout all our lives, is just bringing some of those sensibilities back into a not-for-profit venture like the ICC and saying, hang on, end of the day, it's still a business. And if it were a business, and if I treat it like my business, what would I be doing? And, you know, the answers come. And what I really enjoy is that, you know, it sounds like a challenge, but I think, you know, it's what makes the role really exciting, which is the diversity of people we deal with, the diversity of the staff we have, and ultimately, you know, the impact we are able to have.

13:31You know, it's the fact that, you know, to use that word, sometimes abused word, ikigai, you know, and getting out, what gets you out of the bed in the morning. It's just that sense that whatever you're going to do through the day is going to touch, you know, a billion, two billion lives in some ways, eventually. And, you know, fans are going to either like it or hate it. So I better get it right. Yeah. So it's phenomenal. Yeah. So it's quite a big motivation.

14:04Anurag Dahiya:With your commercial hat on, pure commercial, not politics, what's selling well at the moment? If you look at, I guess, your inventory across all the many things that the ICC administrates, yeah, what's hot right now? What's going off the shelves? It's so much, actually. I mean, sort of AI-focused tech sponsorship. Is it hosting rights? It's that. Hosting rights is honestly something we'd love to grow. You know, that is not something you are really flying off. And that's for a very peculiar reason, which our sport has. There's only so many places which can host. And so, you know, having a viable competition there is important.

14:45But that also forces us to rethink about what is it that we are looking for people to host. So is it just what we currently have or is there other opportunities we can build for newer countries that host? But coming back to your question, I think the fact, that we have a very solid, robust, vibrant digital footprint. And we were probably a bit early in that journey and somewhat different in how we treated that medium as compared to some of the other federations and administrators, where we went in and said that, and, you know, I mean, And it started before my time. Give credit to my predecessors who got us off.

15:30Certainly in my time, to the extent I've been able to influence it, certainly the emphasis has been on our tone of voice being that of a super fan. So we should be as much part of the community of the fans and not talking down to them or sending them official messages or whatever. we should be permitted to laugh. We should be permitted to enjoy the game. And our fans should be permitted to sometimes get angry with us because we said something controversial. But hopefully we don't do that too often. But that's what we've done. We've got this beautiful fan following who considers us an equal. And that, I think, is at the core of what makes us easily sellable.

16:20So many of our partnership conversations now tend to be about, okay, you know, during the event, yes, this is all great. What happens afterwards? And there we are able to now have this continuing conversation with the fans. And we've got a fabulous digital team run by Finn Bradshaw. They do a terrific job of putting out the content that matters to our fans in the places that it matters to them. and engaging with them on a continuous basis. So I think that is the sweet spot where we've got brilliant mainstream linear numbers for our events, but we've got this fabulous sustainance afterwards, sustainability beyond the events and between events, where we continue to have that conversation, dialogue with our fans, and continue to have that, you know, continue to be on that journey with them till we get them to the next event.

17:18Anurag Dahiya:Yeah. Interestingly, you talk about that sort of, you know, the in-between times and continuing a journey and making sure the story continues. A lot of people would say that it's not just cricket, it's lots of sport, but there's too much. There's too much product. There's too much cricket. It's hard for the casual fan to work out what's really important. There's a World Cup pretty much every year, men's, women's, lots of different formats. There's all sorts of short format games. Obviously, the ICC doesn't directly administrate them, but there's a lot of product. And in this media environment where there's uncertainty over the future of the funding model, is the idea of reducing the amount of product and trying to drive towards scarcity something that's appealing to you as a commercial exec?

18:04I don't think that's where the answers lie. If anything, I think the supply of top flight cricket has room to grow. Which is not to say that there is a lot of cricket which for many fans may not hold as much meaning. I think our thinking over the last few years has been that we'll see a period where there's a thousand flowers blooming. not all of them will sustain but out of that will hopefully come out regionally relevant leagues out of that will come and we are working continuously to try and see how we get more context right so i give you an example of test cricket with the world test championship final we've seen the needle move it's not gonna become T20 World Cup.

19:08It's not going to have the following that T20 has or 100 in the UK has.

19:12Anurag Dahiya:It's breathed a bit of life into the format. It has brought back life. It has brought back excitement into bilateral fixtures, especially in that last three months in the run-up to the final, where suddenly you're looking at neutral tests and going, oh, I'm an Indian fan, but New Zealand versus Sri Lanka means something because if they win, then we are out whatever that conversation is amazing you know it's brought back and my god the last world test championship final in lords you know non it was neutral teams amazing atmosphere amazing crowds yeah right to see that you know south african fans you know just yeah singing and dancing you know around test cricket at lords different scenes altogether so that i think you That's taught us something that having that relevance in bilateral cricket is super important.

20:07Now, how we bring that is the challenge in some ways. As far as franchise cricket goes, I think there is, like I said, there is room for a lot of franchise cricket. But I think if you're approaching it with only one perspective, which is I'm going to hold a new privately owned franchise league in, I don't know, in South America, let's say. and with the ultimate aim of being able to sell rights into India, because that's where the money is at. Then I think, you know, that sort of an endeavor is doomed to fail. But if you're going in with the attitude that it is a sport and a league that can work, I need to build a product which will work locally first.

20:50And I think there's a number of leagues that have done that, franchise leagues that have done that, that have embraced that philosophy that, you know, no, we need to work first and foremost in our territory. if that means that, you know, I'll end up doing slightly unfriendly times for India, so be it because I need to be in prime time in my geography. And if you approach it with that philosophy, I think you'll see the distance between the successful and not so successful franchise league experiments will sort of start widening. And I think it's a natural kind of survival of fittest kind of a scenario in that space.

21:27But I think otherwise, I don't see an argument for reducing supply. Like I said, I think top flight cricket, there's certainly room for growth, if anything. you know in 2022, 21, 22 when we were first investigating whether it's the right thing to move to one event a year. I remember a conversation with one of the potential rights buyers and I asked this question, do you think it's going to be too much cricket? And this was somebody in India, you know, so responding with an Indian hat on and their simple response was, there is no such thing as too much cricket. We feel very strongly that we've got the right mix, the right quantum and frequency of events, both in ICC and outside, and the sport is in a solid footing.

22:19Anurag Dahiya:Two more quick ones, because there's a man gesturing for you over there. He probably wants to drive you somewhere, I think. Women's cricket. So have you completely unbundled women's and men's rights? We've taken very important first steps towards that. Our media rights are unbundled in how we sell them. They've still been bought by the same broadcasters, which doesn't bother us. So I think that pattern will continue with media rights. With the commercial rights, we split out a second tier. and within that certain slots to say we'll have a couple of slots where we will target only women's only partners coming in for these and by corollary we'll have a couple of slots for men's only.

23:08That I think we will see that widen as we go forward. Again, you know, we had a happy kind of development on that front when we had Google come on board as a women's partner, women's only partner, and then they liked it so much that they wanted to be a men's partner as well, and which is what they've done. And which is great because, you know, I'm personally quite thrilled that, you know, women's cricket became the gateway here,

23:34Anurag Dahiya:which is awesome. It's not the usual way. No, it's not the usual way at all. But yeah, I think that space, we will see that focusing more opportunities on brands that want to target women's cricket. Specifically, I think those opportunities will grow in the next cycle as we go forward. Final area, market dynamics here in India, as you see them. I'm sure there's no escaping the fact that it is the most important market for cricket. The ICC leadership is obviously majority Indian now. And yeah, how do you see the current state of play in the Indian market as it pertains to commercial support for cricket?

24:18Anurag Dahiya:So it's a strange time in the media market here in India right now. You know, you've got IPL media rights coming up. Everybody seems to think you need a sort of Lalit Modi trick to kind of generate competition in the market. You've got FIFA and IOC rights that haven't been sold, haven't been bought here yet. And all the while, as you talked about earlier, you've got new cricket tournaments popping up here and there who are relying on Indian rights buyers coming in to support them. Yeah, look, I spoke about this earlier on the stage and my view is that as rights owners uh we can't lose sight of the fact that you know ultimately the product is where our focus has got to be the product is delivering value there will be a market for it sure you know i i used to say uh that you know with competition you discover the true value of it without competition you'll still get a pretty decent value yeah right so that's not a problem.

25:12Also, you know, and Peter and I were chatting about it, and Peter was working with a rival organization back when I was at ESPN Star, and he reminded me of a time when ESPN Star was the only broadcaster here in this part of the world, and 10 sports happened. So I think, you know, if it swings too far the other way, where right speeders are much below what they should be, then market will spot that opportunity and somebody will enter. But equally, you have to just look around for the UK market has had a dominant player for a long while. Hasn't meant that rights peers came down. They've stayed at healthy levels.

25:59And I think it's important for the market players to also recognize that, you know, that dynamic of, you know, do you push it so far down that it becomes so attractive for somebody to come in? I think that is always at play. And mature players will always respond in a mature way to that. We've had the experience of selling. I've personally sold into the UK and South African markets since around 2006, you know, 20 years now. And in those 20 years, yes, sure, you know, UK has had every now and then a little bit of a competition pop-up, but not really. And South Africa has not had any competition pretty much.

26:40You know, it's been super sport. But that hasn't meant that we didn't do reasonable deals.

26:45Anurag Dahiya:There are potential competitors there. There are potential competitors, but I think equally there are potential competitors here. I mean, let's not discount, for instance, OTT players. You know, in Australia, we did a deal with Amazon and we are on Amazon Prime in Australia. when we did the deal i don't think it's coming into netflix is coming in yeah uh when we did that deal in australia i think a lot of people were surprised that amazon just came in and picked up cricket in australia yeah but they did and they've done a very good job of it and suddenly that's uh rewritten the rules is it a sort of typical right sort of response to a lack of competition in the market or not a smaller amount of competition in the market to to shorten the deal term?

27:25Anurag Dahiya:Is that a usual response? I mean, look, yes, that's one way to do it because, you know, why would I lock myself into a low value if I see a better value on the horizon? I mean, when we went to market, there was competition. And we did offer up eight-year rights. But I think internally, we were still of the opinion that four is the right duration because it's a growing market, you know. And things like women's cricket are growing. So we certainly want to give this growth a runway. and be able to keep bringing the value back for our members through that. Some of the rights holders will probably look to have shorter deal terms, but equally, I think the market will respond differently to that.

28:04We've just seen the FIFA deal in China, which is ultimately a longer term deal.