Industry watchers discuss the rationale behind roping in an eclectic mix of Bollywood stars and cricketing greats to promote India’s biggest sporting event and what it means for the broadcasters
The much-awaited Indian Premier League (IPL) starts today. As the nation gears up for an epic battle between teams, a different kind of war is already brewing between Star Sports and JioCinema, the official media rights holders of IPL.
Each has roped in an array of celebrities to expand the viewership and attract first-time viewers, giving rise to, what some brand experts call, an intense rivalry between the two broadcasting giants.
This is the first time that IPL will be telecast on two broadcasting platforms. In what appears to be a battle for viewership between the two, Star Sports and JioCinema are bringing many celebrities from cricket and Bollywood onboard to grab more eyeballs.
While actor Ranveer Singh is the brand ambassador for Star Sports, cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar has been roped in by JioCinema to promote the cricket tournament.
“This is the first time where digital rights have gone outside Star’s ambit and both the companies have a clear mandate of maintaining (or creating) leadership to attract max advertisers at premium rates,” Jain said.
Experts also believe that this battle may result in overall high viewership. “This battle should result in an overall higher viewership as the companies dole out goodies including free streaming/broadcast and live streaming in multiple regional languages. It will be interesting to see how this battle further evolves as the nation swarms into the cricket fever,” Jain said.
According to Kroll’s 8th Celebrity Brand Valuation Study titled, ‘Beyond the Mainstream’, Ranveer Singh is the most valued celebrity of 2022 with a brand value of USD 181.7 million. Apart from Singh, Disney Star has brought on board actor Ajay Devgn, and cricket stalwarts Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya urging viewers to watch IPL on their TV sets.
Besides the ‘master-blaster’, JioCinema has collaborated with cricket stars MS Dhoni and Suryakumar Yadav asking people to watch IPL on the digital platform anywhere. IPL has combined sports and entertainment. For the first time, IPL has moved from male viewership to family viewing. There has been an element of glamour in IPL with Bollywood being roped in.
Disney Star reaches an agreement with cable TV operators
Disney Star has reportedly arrived at an agreement with cable TV providers Hathway Digital, DEN Networks and GTPL for inclusion of its entertainment and sports channels in their base bouquets.
According to a report in a leading business site, the three MSOs, which are backed by Reliance Industries, had said they would remove Disney Star’s channels from their base bouquets from April 1 because of an increase in bouquet rates.
Star’s entertainment and sports channels will now be included in the base bouquets of the cable operators
“Disney Star and MSOs have finally found a working arrangement,” the report stated quoting a senior cable TV executive at one of the MSO companies.
It said officials aware of the matter have said that the MSOs will now come out with revised channel packages.
The MSOs and the broadcasters have been at loggerheads over the latter’s decision to hike the price of their channel bouquets under the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) New Tariff Order (NTO) 3.0.
High viewership
The total number of minutes watched have increased by a whopping 142% compared to last year, touching 21.5 billion minutes, said Star Sports in a release. Star Sports’ build-up programming to Tata IPL 2023 has seen a sharp 62% increase over the previous year, reaching a staggering 205.6 million viewers, the channel has shared..
IPL 2023: JioCinema posts 2.5 crore app downloads on Day 1
The app saw 6 crore unique viewers who tuned in for the first Gujarat Titans vs Chennai Super Kings match, claimed Viacom18 in a statement. In what bodes well for JioCinema’s maiden IPL journey, Viacom18’s OTT app saw 2.5 crore downloads on the first day of the tournament, breaking the record for the most-installed app in a single day. Total match views on day one touched 50 crore. However, viewers complain of buffering issues, app crashes during CSK-GT IPL match. JioCinema responded to a few tweets expressing regret over the situation
