Parle Products, the biggest television advertiser during the Indian Premier League (IPL) last year, hasn’t yet finalised its TV plus digital plan for this season and is still holding discussions with JioStar, the joint venture run by Reliance Industries and Disney.
At least two other big advertisers told FE they are still not sure of the returns on their digital ad buck this season and are taking a second look at their spending plan. The advertisers were earlier hoping the combined might of Jio and Disney Star would improve the reach of IPL viewership. But Jio Hotstar’s announcement of its subscription plans effective February 14 has made advertisers circumspect as this means that the IPL matches would no longer be streamed “entirely free” by JioStar.
“There will be an obvious drop in digital reach for advertising brands – we anticipate it will be around 15-20%. On the other hand, there would be some reprieve for TV, which might see a rise in viewership numbers at the cost of digital,” says Karan Taurani, senior VP at Elara Securities.
The asking rate on digital this year is Rs 250-350 per mille (thousand impressions), which is a tad higher than that of last year. On television (SD+HD), it is Rs 15-16 lakh per 10 seconds and the CTV ad rates are Rs 8-9 lakh per 10-second slot. “The ball is in the advertisers’ court at the moment,” says a media analyst, “and there will be some erosion in the rates”.
JioCinema streamed IPL games for free for the 2023 and 2024 seasons, after Reliance-backed Viacom18 (which owned JioCinema app) bagged the digital rights for Rs 23,758 crore, covering the 2023 to 2027 cycle. Before that, TV and digital IPL rights were a bundled deal which was held by Star India (renamed Disney Star after the merger of the two media giants) and its streaming app Disney+ Hotstar.
With 620 million viewers in 2024 compared to 449 million in 2023, the IPL 2024 witnessed a 38% surge in audience reach on JioCinema.
The platform says there will be “a considerable free viewership time keeping in mind the walk-in consumer” after which its ML (machine learning)-driven analytics might deem “a viewer is ready to upgrade to a subscription plan”. In fact, all content on the Jio Hotstar app – including IPL – is free to access up to a point, which will be different for different viewers based on the time they spend on the platform.
“That is where the issue lies,” says a media expert. “We anticipate a fall in reach because access to the games will be restricted at some point and it is not clear what that point is.”