The Big Boys (ESPN Star Sports) Enter Event Management in India

ESPN Start Sports today announced the launch of their on-ground division Event Management Group (EMG) in India. The company has said that in India PepsiCo has signed on EMG to manage on-ground events of football league Pepsi T20 Football."Our Event Management Group has firmly established itself across Asia Pacific with world class products designed to engage and entertain sports fans” said ESPN Software India Executive Vice-President Sanjay Kailash. EMG is also managing School Quiz 2012 which is being sponsored by HDFC.

This turn of events can be a great opening for startups like Ayojak and EventNu which are active in the event space. Ayojak, a technology company enabling events, recently entered ticketing for sports events. I got in touch with founder of Ayojak, Santosh Panda to know how this would impact the startup scene.

There is no direct immediate imapct but this is a positive indicator for the event ecosystem. This means that a lot of events on a big scale would be coming to India and this can only be good for players like us.

Internationally, the EMG manages and promotes sporting events around Asia such as the KIA X Games Asia, KL World 5s and Guinness 9-Ball Tour.