While the most awaited sporting event in the world, FIFA World Cup is going live today, it has sparked a new telecom battle for mobile operators Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Vodafone India trying to outdo each other to get a share of more than 100 million viewers.
Airtel subscribers can view the live broadcast of the month-long tournament in various local languages besides English and Hindi on Airtel TV. Additionally, to beat the Reliance Jio game, Aitel is even providing a sneak peek into exclusive behind-the-scenes match snippets along with match previews/reviews.
Meanwhile, Mukesh Ambani led Jio is providing coverage to football matches live on Jio TV at no additional subscription charges. The telecom is also broadcasting India-Afghanistan test match starting on Thursday to attract cricket users over its platform.
While these two players are all set to gain over the mega event, how could Vodafone stay silent? The company has announced contests based on the world cup on Vodafone App. Contestants can get an iPad Mini by winning a game or making a transaction, while the bumper prize winner will get a travel voucher worth Rs 1 lakh.
Sameer Batra, CEO – content and apps at Bharti Airtel said,
While T20 cricket tournament received great feedback from our users, we are confident of recreating the same magic with the upcoming football extravaganza as well.
As tariffs in the telecom market have hit rock bottom level, mobile operators are battling intense competition to attract high-data users to push up revenues which have already soared by more than 20% over last year.
Interestingly, sports event have always remained an exciting opportunity to garner customer attraction for telecom companies. A similar heated rivalry was earlier also observed when these giants wooed customers with offers during the Indian Premier League cricket tournament.
Meanwhile, Jio has recently announced an additional 1.5 GB per day to customers who recharge their daily -recurring data pack in the month of June, another shrewd move to get customers latch on to their data offers which will be useful when they watch football matches.