OMNI Television has launched a video-heavy promotional website for the 2011 International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Weekend & Awards, an Indian film and awards festival, giving Canadians a spicy taste of the industry’s best.

This marks IIFA’s North American debut, having previously left its travelling footprint in countries such as Sri Lanka, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

As an official broadcast sponsor of IIFA, OMNI will be producing a pre-awards ‘green’ carpet event showcasing interviews with Bollywood stars and streaming it live on the dedicated film festival webpage and OMNI.2 on June 25. The estimated worldwide audience for the awards broadcast is 600 million.

The site is devoted to providing Canadians with festival news, video clips of past film awards and OMNI programs as well as IIFA-themed events happening in Toronto.

The broadcaster’s media strategy promoting the online platform includes TV promotional spots on OMNI’s South-Asian programming such as Bollywood Boulevard, Bollywood Freetime Movie and OMNI South Asian News as well as via the OMNI newsletter and display ads on its website.

Potential advertising opps include pre-roll video ads and display ads on the IIFA site.

‘It made sense for OMNI, having strong ties to the South Asian community and being a broadcaster of a lot of Bollywood movies, to come on board as a sponsor of the IIFAs,’ says Andrea Gagliardi, web general manager, OMNI.

In addition, CIBC and The Bay have jumped on board as festival presenting sponsors.

The 12th annual festival is set to take place June 23 -25 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.