By SONALI KRISHNA
Indiantelevision.com Team

Following the format of six associate sponsors, Idol has finalised its sponsors with each sponsor paying Rs 25 million for the entire series, say reliable industry sources.

The associate sponsors being:

1) Nokia
2) Airtel
3) P&G
4) Marico
5) Godrej
6) Yet to be disclosed

Set India's EVP Rohit Gupta says, " Idols as a format is a show that has done extremely well. Two things which people need to understand, which advertisers have already seemed to accept is,

1. This property is on a platform like SET which caters to general mass entertainment unlike a Channel [V], where the audience is very small.
2. This is a tested format as it has worked in every country that it has been to. This format is three years old and with every new series it's only doing better."

With most advertisers today looking for branding opportunities to break the clutter. A platform like this provides for a huge opportunity for branding and that's the value most advertisers are on the look out for, which a normal soap or a serial cannot offer adds Gupta.

The third reason being it is the next big property. Everybody wants to be associated with a big property and this is one which will grow and the viewership patterns across all countries where this format has been tested shows a sustainable increase week after week.

SET is also going to be allowing for a lot of innovations and branding endeavours for these sponsors separately on this show.

Why no title sponsor?

"We moved away from the title sponsorship format because the moment you rope in a title sponsor, the associate sponsors don't get too much mileage. Also, the associate equi-status sponsor works very well for us. That's why in the last four years we have consciously changed our format. Also, it is more revenue effective as the moment a title comes in a lot brands are not too inclined in getting associated," points out Gupta.

With revenue commitments in place and the initial preparations all done, one just has to wait and watch if Sony's high stakes property is going to be their television ratings idol.