PepsiCo is doing everything it can to try and convince the 1.2 billion people of India that they might want to try a Pepsi. Or maybe a Mountain Dew?

The beverage giant has just signed on as the title sponsor the Indian Premier League, a major cricket tournament that will be called the Pepsi Indian Premier League for the next five years. And the naming rights only cost about $72 million, twice the amount that the previous five-year sponsor, realtor DLF, shelled out.

Nasdaq.com comments that PepsiCo “has quite a lot invested in the country with a range of snacks (Lay's and Kurkure being the flagship brands) and its usual line of beverages.” That kind of investment has the company trying to protect its place in India as local companies and others try to unseat them. As a CNBC report in the market asked this week, 

While the beverage and food multinational is already a big sponsor of cricket, the IPL investment is reportedly its biggest investment in the game so far. But is the IPL association worth so much money, given that the last edition of the tournament saw viewer ratings at their lowest and given that the BCCI continues to have a volatile relationship with team owners?

India's Economic Times notes that Kurkure and Lay’s, which are the leaders of India’s snack market, are losing market share to such local snack makers as Balaji, Yellow Diamond and DFM Foods' Crax. And new competitors are likely to spring up since the salted-snack market in India has grown 25% annually.Continue reading...

In 2002, Nike agreed to fork over £303 million ($485 million) and give a share of retail sales to Manchester United so its iconic swoosh could grace the home kit, away kit and related apparel of the world's most popular soccer team. But their 13-year agreement comes to an end in 2015, and the word from the Daily Mail is that the two sides are in the midst of negotiating a new deal that could pay the Red Devils a massive £1 billion ($1.6 billion).

If signed, it’ll be the largest sponsorship deal in all of sports. Not too shabby for a team that Forbes ranked as the top of its annual ranking of the world’s 50 most valuable sports teams. Forbes valued ManU at $2.23 billion, $350 million more than the second team on the list, Real Madrid. 

Nike will have a six-month window to negotiate, the Mail reports. Sure to be mentioned in the talks is the fact that GM's Chevrolet division agreed this summer to shell out $559 million over seven years so Manchester United would sport Chevy's logo on the front of the shirt — the terms of which contributed to the ouster of GM's former CMO, Joel Ewanick.Continue reading...

So far early in this National Football League year, the league seems to be writing The Tale of Two Seasons. It truly is the best of times in some ways — and the worst of times in at least one huge respect.

As every gridiron and sports fan is aware, the negative was highlighted throughout last weekend, the third weekend of play this fall, as substitute referees blew a handful of significant calls, made many other questionable calls, and overall threw so many flags at the players and teams that the pace of play was severely disrupted. All of that came down as team owners and Commissioner Roger Goodell continued to stand firm against the contract demands of the permanent referees and kept them off the field as a result of the labor dispute.

Then, to end the game between the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks on Monday Night Football last night, the Keystone Cops refereeing crew made a call in the endzone that gave Seattle the winning touchdown as time expired — and immediately ranked as one of the most badly botched calls in the history of professional football.

Remarkably, after reviewing the play on Tuesday, the NFL came out and officially refused to utter a mea culpa on behalf of its replacement referees. In fact, the league upheld the call and is "holding firm" as the negotiations between the NFL and the NFL Referees Association continued today.Continue reading...

GM's former CMO Joel Ewanick may have pulled the plug on any plans by GM brands to advertise during the 2013 Super Bowl in favor of Manchester United before he abruptly left the automaker in July, but that isn't stopping the GMC brand from redoubling its long-running interest and investment in the National Football League.

Just consider the 30-some GMC Sierra pick-up trucks that just took over Times Square for the NFL Kick-Off (check out the pictures on Facebook). "Nothing changes for us" in terms of the GMC brand's association with the nation's most popular sport — and a brand marketers' best friend — Chris Hornberger, GMC national sales promotion manager, told brandchannel. It's been three years since the GMC brand or vehicles have been featured in a Super Bowl ad anyway.

GMC is one of a chorus of brands that continues to increase their bets on professional football with this week's kick-off of the official season "like children anticipating the arrival of Santa Claus," as New York Times ad columnist Stuart Elliott put it. Nothing else comes close to matching NFL games as a prime-time TV-advertising vehicle, but there are doubters.Continue reading...

Are you ready for some football? Big brands surely are. The National Football League may be a marketing and TV-programing juggernaut, but it is carrying more weight for more major brands than ever.

Take auto advertisers, for instance. Despite football telecasts that already were slated to be crowded with other car brands, Audi decided to use tonight's kickoff game between the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys for the marketing launch of its crucial new 2013 S Models. These performance nameplates (S6, S7 and S8) and the "S" brand are fundamental for Audi to move to the next phase of its positioning in the U.S. market, as a provider of exciting, luxurious and well-designed automobiles.

And so the NFL gets the call tonight to host the first Audi ad under its new tagline, "Heighten Every Moment," featuring the Audi S8. The 60-second spot (watch it above) will run in the first break after kickoff. Audi also announced that it will appear in the Super Bowl game in February, its sixth consecutive advertising appearance in the big game.Continue reading...

Major League Bseball today released a new public affairs campaign, titled Baseball Believes, featuring a pair of amusing spots starring Steve Carell, Ken Jeong & Colin Hanks re-creating "signature moments in baseball history that led fans across the nation to believe that anything was possible." (Watch the longer version below.)

According to MLB's press release, the campaign was filmed at Boston's historic Fenway Park as part of a longstanding collaboration between Major League Baseball, its 30 Clubs and Stand Up To Cancer — a non-profit initiative of the Entertainment Industry Foundation that rang the opening bell at the NYSE this morning.Continue reading...

A peak audience of 11.2 million watched Channel 4's broadcast of the rousing opening ceremony for the London 2012 Paralympic Games, titled “Enlightenment.” An average 7.7 million tuned in to see the four-hour show on August 29th. (Not coincidentally, the Queen entered the stadium at 8:45pm, when viewing peaked.)

The British broadcaster reported that it was its largest audience in more than 10 years. "Last night's opening ceremony was a spectacular start to the London 2012 Paralympic Games," said Channel 4's Jay Hunt. "I'm delighted that so many viewers enjoyed it with us." 

The ceremony, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and following on from the "pandemonium" of the London 2012 Games Opening Ceremony, focused on the story of scientific discovery and education.

Sir Ian McKellen danced to a stirring version of "I Am What I Am," as the stadium was transformed into a representation of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Accompanied by narration from physicist Stephen Hawking, a new musical piece based on Newton’s Principia Mathematica underscored the theme of the Games: ability and achievement come in many forms.Continue reading...

The five Olympic rings are being replaced by the three Paralympic agitos as the London 2012 Games prepare for new venues, world records and athletes, including 1,800 wheelchair users, 22 assistance dogs, and 293 buses converted for extra wide access.

This will be the biggest Paralympics in history, with 4,200 Paralympians from 165 nations competing in sports ranging from wheelchair racing, athletics, and blind football to wheelchair rugby.

"We are seeing the nation really embracing the Paralympics, buying tickets and putting us on the way to being the first sold-out Paralympics and showing a huge amount of interest in Paralympics GB," said Paralympics GB's chief executive Tim Hollingsworth. 

Paralympics TV broadcaster Channel 4 is offering packages of eight-ten spots, including both daytime and prime. “We think that the Paralympics will perform strongly from a viewing standpoint, so it is a smart buy,” said Adrian English, head of media investment at agency Carat. Continue reading...