Mahuaa Bangla scores big with football reality show

Mahuaa Bangla scores big with football reality show
By Javed Farooqui
Published: 29 Jul 2010 - 23:18
MUMBAI: Mahuaa Bangla, the Bengali general entertainment channel from Mahuaa Media, is bringing 2010 Fifa World Cup's Golden Ball winner Diego
Forlan to Kolkata as part of its football reality show ‘The Game’.
The 31-year-old sensation who is expected to be in the football-crazy city on Friday, joins Brazil's two footballing greats Romario and Branco to
co-host the last episode of “The Match”, which aims to find 11 football talents from around West Bengal and train them to play one single match
against Kolkata’s leading club Mohun Bagan XI.
As part of the show, Forlan will be at the Yuba Bharati Krirangan on 1 August for a Grand Finale of the match between Challenger XI and Mohun
Bagan XI. Brazilian star Branco will be coach of Challenger XI while former India International Dipendu Biswas will be captain of the team.
The channel has also roped in HUL and Icore E-Services as prime sponsors for the reality show, the format of which is owned by Endemol.
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“We wanted to be different, we wanted to bring about difference in the thought process of the audience, we also have soaps and other reality shows
but Football is very special in West Bengal at least. They (Bengalis) are crazy about Brazilian and other footballers. So we wanted to bring Bengal and
Football together and bring international players to West Bengal and create wholesome entertainment for the audience. It’s essentially that,” says
Mahuaa Media SVP - corporate strategy Gitanjali Sehgal.
Enthused with the kind of buzz that the reality show has created for the newly launched channel, Mahua is also planning to have its own team in
future, “At some point, we would also want to create a team, not necessarily a team right now,” Sehgal stresses.
Sehgal though remains non-committal as to whether the channel plans to take the reality show further. “We will see, we will want to take it further
definitely, but one thing is we are too new right now to comment on that. Maybe after the finals we will decide. We first got Branco then we got
Romario and now we are getting Forlan, we hope to take it further.”
On the company's approach as far as promoting the show is concerned, Sehgal says, “We had a 360-degree approach. There have been hoardings all
across Bengal and then we had a radio initiative, we have Below-the-line initiatives, we had print, we had other channels also promoting us because
it’s a very big thing that Franco or Romario or Forlan are coming. There is a lot of energy and buzz about Mahuaa Bangla right know,” she asserts.
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The channel also has leading film actress Bipasha Basu as its brand ambassador.
Clearly, the fledgling channel is pulling all stops to make a big bang mark in what is an already crowded regional language arena.
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