The Spanish top flight promises to offer more entertainment and high-quality matches in India
Viacom 18 has come up with great ideas for on-air programming and better features to improve viewing issues for Indian fans so that Indian football fans have no trouble watching their favorite La Liga matches.
They have created the campaign. #whyseesomethingmore for this season in hopes that fans will have the best possible experience while watching the game.
José Antonio Cachaza, CEO of La Liga India, promised Indian fans that La Liga will deliver high-quality content across India and will be ready to form strong partnerships with Indian sports channels.
Antonio Cachaza commented, “With each new season of LaLiga, we work to deliver an even better content and experience than before and we are delighted to see the result of our efforts in the love and support we receive from audiences around the world. It has been very rewarding to work with Viacom18 to continually increase accessibility for the existing and potential fan base here.”
Along with Cachaza, we also have Siddharth Sharma, Head of Content, TV and Digital, Viacom18 Sports. They discussed how La Liga’s audience has grown over the years and how India has played a significant role in this. Siddharth Sharma has promised Indian fans that they will be able to watch all matches without any problems, including language barriers, he said. “LaLiga reached more than nine million fans through our network, and we want to take advantage of this even more with the launch of our dedicated sports channel, Sports18. It will be our effort to bring the league to a larger fan base across the country through our platforms.”
La Liga has always been home to great players and clubs that dominated European football. In recent years, the league has gained 160 million social media followers, with fans watching games in 20 different languages on 17 different platforms.
It has also become the only European league with a Tiktok account for its Chinese fans, as well as the launch of a self-developed OTT platform that will provide fans with LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank matches.
Cachaza also mentioned how Atletico Madrid helps in the development of football, citing the establishment of La Liga football schools in India and Girona’s visit to India for pre-season matches. This experience will benefit the development of Indian football for years to come. With the FIFA U-17 World Cup approaching, India has a lot to look forward to in terms of football growth.
Few questions asked the journalist when the session ended.
Journalist: How has the departure of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo affected the LaLiga audience?
Antonio Cachaça: No, La Liga has seen many world-class players come here and play for different clubs, such as Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Kaká, Raúl and Figo, who later left but their views remained constant, even though Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have massive status in Europe, they are not bigger than the clubs. Now, Lewandowski and Benzema are two of the most popular players in Barcelona and Real Madrid, so the big players come and go, but it has no effect on the audience.
Journalist: Will there be more La Liga players coming to India to play or manage I-League or ISL teams in the future?
Antonio Cachaça: Why not? La Liga is doing everything it can to help develop Indian football, and in recent years we have seen La Liga players play for ISL teams such as Luis Garcia, Diego Forlan and Aaron Hughes who have played for Atletico de Kolkata, Mumbai City, and Kerala Blasters to name a few. And in the future we will see more players coming to India.
Journalist: When Marc Muniesa joined Girona on loan and then became permanent, did many fans remember him as a Stoke City player rather than the new Girona player making his La Liga debut? So does this mean we are still far behind the Premier League?
Cachaça: To be honest, even I can’t deny that the Premier League is currently far ahead of all the others, and is also considered to be the best league in Europe, with us taking second place. If I tell you the number of views they make on match days, they are six billion, while LaLiga makes 900 million. So their global impact is huge, but we’re also coming in slowly and hopefully we’ll be able to go toe to toe with them in terms of marketing.
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