MUMBAI: Bigger than anything that the cricket world has experienced ever before! That was the promise for the International Cricket Council (ICC) World Cup to be hosted by South Africa in 2003.

But it is the Indian channels, marketers and advertisers who have taken these words literally as the entire country gears to watch the greatest cricketing spectacle of recent times.

With the cricket World Cup all set to explode with the opening ceremony tonight, indiantelevision.com has done a quick wrap up of the plans channels from different genres have up their sleeves for the biggest cricket event of the year.

As far as TV advertising is concerned, media buyers say that Sony has managed committed advertising of Rs 2.1 billion at this point whereas Nimbus has about Rs 1.3 billion.

As far as what the channels themselves are claiming, while Sony does not discuss figures, Nimbus has gone on record to say its has bagged between Rs 1.5 and Rs 1.6 billion.

All that remains is for spot buy inventories to fill up now, which is where the performance of the Indian team becomes crucial. The better they perform the, higher will be the monies flowing into both the channels.