The Indian Premier League?s (IPL) return to India has spelt some good news for Starsports.com. According to Ajit Mohan, executive vice-president and head of new media at Star India, the tourney?s viewership on Starsports.com has increased by 25% after its return to India. While during its UAE stay (20 matches), the sport was delivering an average one million visits a day, the number has moved up to 1.7-1.8 million visits a day.
?No doubt, the start of the IPL after its return to India was a bit slow but now it has been going up every day. As an example, while the first match between Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders after its return had around 800,000 visits, the May 7 match between Delhi Daredevils vs Kolkata Knight Riders in Delhi and Kings XI Punjab vs Chennai Super Kings in Cuttack delivered around 2.5 million visits,? says Mohan. ?So, just from where the UAE phase ended and the India phase started to right down to May 7, there has been an almost threefold increase in traffic on a daily basis,? he adds.
Overall, Starsports.com has seen 40-50% jump in traffic when compared to last year based on an equivalent number of matches wherein the total number of visits till date stands at about 27 million. It is pertinent to note here that the term ?visit? on a digital platform indicates the number of times a viewer has come to the given platform to watch the property. Therefore, here it means that on an average a viewer visited Starsports.com 27 million times to view the IPL till date.
According to Star India, the audience for the IPL this year has become much younger. ?There is a disproportionate skew towards the 18-24 years age group this year unlike last year when the demographic was significantly tilted towards the 24-35 years bracket,? says Mohan.
Sanjay Gupta, chief operating officer of Star India said that the network was looking to build its sports portfolio in a big way and introducing IPL on Starsports.com was a step in the same direction. The network is putting in an investment of $3.2 billion in the sports business over the next few years, he reiterated. ?We think that sports will find steady viewing on both online and pay television platforms. As far as IPL goes, we?ve seen a significant jump in audiences from when YouTube put it up last year. The minimum time spent on IPL is as much as 37 minutes per match and this is good quality content that we are talking about. In the future, there will be more people on the go and how content is applied to various devices such as smartphones will be critical.?Ajay Modani, co-founder and chief operating officer, Capillary Technologies observes that online viewership for both the 2.30 pm and the 6.30 pm matches has grown 70-80% over last year. ?The 2.30 pm matches obviously see the majority of average online viewers but they are fewer in number as most matches are hosted during prime time,? he says. Capillary Technologies is a provider of cloud-based software solutions that helps retailers to engage intelligently with customers through in-store, mobile, social media and e-mail channels.
Interestingly, three distinct factors have contributed to the rise in online viewership for matches played till now, he says. First, this year the IPL online broadcasters Times Internet and Star India have significantly ramped up their mobile and online platforms for ease of access and connectivity. ?In a nutshell, it has become much easier to watch matches online this year. Startsports.com has gone for a complete overhaul to increase page views and overall stickiness with the site,? says Modwani.
Second, more and more viewers now prefer to quickly catch up with their favourite matches while in office and on the go. Earlier, this audience had to primarily rely on scoring sites such as cricinfo.com but they can now catch up with the matches easily since the IPL is aired live with a 5-minute delay on Starsports. Third, the explosive growth of social media reach and conversations is also driving people to watch online to catch up with friends in conversations, says Modwani.