IPL 2023 LIVE Streaming: IPL’s Jio moment has arrived. On the opening day, JioCinema lived up to the expectations with 1.5 Cr people tuning in when MS Dhoni hit a mammoth six simultaneously. Viacom18 has pitched 500 million viewership from IPL which is slightly behind YouTube India’s monthly viewership of 514 million. With around 50 million viewership recorded on 1st day itself, JioCinema is on course to eclipse YouTube. Follow Indian Premier League LIVE Updates on InsideSport.IN.
But this is not great news for Disney-Star. Both Star Sports and Disney+Hotstar are behind paywall and are likely to see a drop in revenue. As per reports, Viacom18 is set to bag 60% of the ad revenue from IPL with digital revenue toppling TV for the first time.
As per Media Partners Asia, the projected ad revenue for JioCinema will be 60% while Disney-Star might find it difficult to recover Rs 23,575 crore it paid to secure IPL Media rights. As per MPA’s projection, Star’s ad sales could be around $200-220 million while JioCinema could touch the $350 million mark. But it should be noted that both platforms have struggled to sell their entire ad spots.
“IPL incumbent rights holder Star has struggled to withstand Jio’s onslaught as well as a challenging macroeconomic environment,” MPA stated in its report.
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Disney-Star remains confident though. The reason is sports consumption is still high on TV than digital. Furthermore, time spent on TV is also greater than on digital platforms.
“We believe that time spent and consumption of matches will remain high on TV, as digital will primarily be convenience-led and on-the-go viewing. IPL on digital may get a larger number of viewers or reach, however, time spent compared to TV remains much lower,” Business Today quoted Elara Securities as saying.
IPL 2023 LIVE Streaming: How is Viacom18 winning IPL war?
- By offering a free-for-all live streaming on JioCinema, Viacom18 is looking for the bigger pie of viewership.
- However, it won’t be in standard definition. JioCinema is offering 4K live streaming for free.
- So far, Disney-Star has put IPL behind a paywall with a subscription-based model on Hotstar.
- But JioCinema is looking to change that. It has already disrupted the market with free streaming of FIFA World Cup and WPL.
- Viacom18’s free model has also forced Disney-Star to offer 12 matches for free on its free-to-air Star Utsav channel.
- It has also forced Star to launch its own 4K channel to keep up with JioCinema in terms of picture quality.
- With higher viewership, JioCinema is also enticing brands to come on board for a cheaper ad rate than Disney-Star.
- Viacom18 is expecting to touch 500 million digital viewers in IPL. YouTube is the only platform that has monthly 514 million viewers in India.
However, market experts are not very happy with JioCinema’s free-for-all offerings. To note, Viacom18 bagged IPL Digital rights for ₹20,500 Crore. Experts believe it will not only be difficult for Viacom18 to recover the the amount in next two years but also have a negative impact on the Indian OTT market.
“It would be difficult for them to recover even 30-40 per cent of IPL’s content acquisition cost via the digital route if it is free in the near term (the next two years). JioCinema offering IPL free will [also] be a big negative for ARPUs of other OTT platforms in a market where most of them are already available at cheap prices versus global averages,” Karan Taurani, SVP at Elara Capital, told BT.
Through the free-for-all streaming service, JioCinema is set to surpass Star’s viewership numbers. However, as Disney-Star still commands the TV market, it is still attracting better sponsorship deals than JioCinema. As of Thursday, Star Sports had roped in 13 official sponsors. While the number is less than JioCinema, Star has sold them at a higher price, earning more revenue in the process.
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