It’s raining freebies for cricket lovers. After JioCinema’s audacious move to give free digital viewership of Indian Premier League (IPL) matches, Disney + Hotstar has done an encore.
It said on Friday that this year’s Asia Cup and ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup tournaments will be available for free to all mobile phone users accessing its app. The official explanation for lifting the paywall is to “democratise the game of cricket and make it accessible to as many mobile users in India as possible”.
But the real reason, say analysts, is an attempt to challenge JioCinema’s march, which attracted a record 449 million viewers during the Tata IPL matches this year. It also reported 1.47 billion views on the opening weekend of IPL 2023 — higher than Disney+Hotstar’s viewership of the league last year. While JioCinema offered free viewership, Disney+ Hotstar charged a starting price of `299 per month.
Viacom18 won the digital streaming rights of IPL from 2023 to 2027 for Rs 23,758 crore, which was earlier held by Disney Star.
Disney+Hotstar expects a cumulative reach of around 200-220 million for the ICC World Test Championship finals played across five days; this includes television and OTT viewership.
Analysts say Disney+ Hotstar is leaving no stone unturned after the recent subscriber and revenue setbacks during IPL. Karan Taurani, VP, Elara Capital, estimates that with IPL going away, Disney+ Hotstar would have lost 14% of its subscribers over the last six months. The potential revenue impact, he noted, is close to 40-45%.”
As per Elara’s assessment, more than 90% of OTT consumption is routed via smartphones, as connected TV penetration (8%-10% currently) remains low.
This means a section of the audience will watch premium cricket content free, and it might take even more time for other OTT platforms to undertake price hikes.”Offering cricket free may also lead to a bigger fall in Disney + Hotstar paid subscriber base, if continued over the medium term,” it said in a report.
Disney + Hotstar dismisses any impact on viewership due to fatigue among cricket fans post IPL. Sanjog Gupta, head, sports, Disney Star, says the company’s internal assessment is that both viewer awareness as well as their intention to watch the World Test Championship (WTC) finals is higher than any Test series prior to this.
“IPL actually served to generate a lot of interest because a lot of the players who were playing in even the playoffs are going to be playing the WTC finals. We also leveraged that and marketed the WTC finals in a big way during the IPL to drive audience traffic and fans from the IPL to the WTC finals,” he adds.
As the official broadcaster for the ongoing ICC WTC finals, Disney Star has signed 15 sponsors for the Star Sports Network and 13 sponsors for Disney+ Hotstar across categories. As per ITW core estimates, the ad rates for the WTC finals ranged from about 2.7-3 lakh per 10 seconds on TV, whereas on OTT the CPM or cost per million ranges between 250-550.
There’s high interest in the championship also because India hasn’t won an ICC trophy since 2013. Gupta says this anticipation to see India play Australia and potentially win the trophy has led to a spike in advertiser interest. “The recent slowdown in ad spending is actually a trend that emerged sometime in September last year due to macroeconomic conditions, the conflict in Ukraine, and the drying up of funding available to startups.
However, during the course of the IPL, on the back of the significant viewership that IPL got, and also other factors like the macroeconomic environment improving, we started seeing a pick-up in ad spends that has continued into the WTC finals. The ad volumes in the second half of IPL were higher than the ad volumes in the first and that has continued into the WTC finals,” he said.
Disney Star has a full roster of sporting events this year, with the IPL being immediately followed by the ongoing ICC World Test Championship (WTC) finals, followed by Asia Cup, ICC ODI World Cup, Pro Kabaddi League, India tour of South Africa (towards the end of the year), and the new season of the English Premier League (available on both OTT & TV).
Did someone say TV is dead?
Disney Star says Tata IPL 2023 surpassed its expectations on viewership as 505 million viewers tuned in to its live broadcast of the matches. The broadcaster garnered 427.1 billion minutes of watch time for the live broadcast of the matches and witnessed a growth of 32% in match TVR compared to the last edition. Forty seven of the 74 matches registered peak concurrency of more than 30 million.
The Hindi speaking markets garnered a viewership of 334 million — a growth of 47% compared to the last edition. Additionally, 101 million viewers tuned in to the HD broadcast — three times higher compared to last year, demonstrating the growing preference for high-definition sports viewing.
Both in terms of popularity among the young demographic, which is an indicator of potential for growth and the future of the league as well as attracting premium audiences (150 million via NCCS A) on television to IPL, it has been a big boost for the broadcaster. Viewership among kids (116 million) increased by 64% compared to the last edition.
The viewership on linear TV during IPL showed that live sports consumption on the medium is thriving, especially in India. But globally, the streaming shift continues. Bob Chapek, former chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company, had announced shutting down of 100 TV channels (including sports) in 2021.