This IPL season is going to be like no other. Surely for the fans because for the first time they can choose. The past 15 seasons have seen a synergy with the TV and digital rights going to the same party, but that changed when the total value of the media rights for the 2023-27 cycle hit ₹48,390 crore. The big money wasn’t a surprise, but the valuation for the digital rights was.
It was an unprecedented number in the Indian sports broadcast industry and nearly three times the price ( ₹16,347.50 crore) at which media rights for the previous cycle (2018-22) were sold in 2017. Star Sports India bagged the TV rights for ₹23,575 crore for 2023-27 and Viacom18 the digital rights at ₹23,758 crore. Both going for almost the same price was a surprise and, if anything, many wondered how this would play out in the real world.
A report published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India says there are 692 million active internet users in India with a fairly even split between rural India (351mn) and urban areas (341mn). A KPMG analysis shows that TV, on the other hand, enjoys an overall reach of 900 million. So, why are the valuations for both similar?
Clearly, someone was prepared to take a gamble. Many experts thought Viacom18’s bid was all about the future. One look at what is playing out on our screens and you’ll know the broadcast wars are upon us in earnest.
In a Jio Cinema commercial, Sachin Tendulkar, dressed in his best linen, is lounging in his drawing room, watching cricket on smartphone. That’s how he wants you to follow IPL.
Switch over to Star’s bouquet of channels, Virat Kohli bats for a different experience. He screams over a crowd of spectators and talks about that ‘stadium vaali feeling’ which he says only comes from watching on TV. Roughly 97% of TV households in India are single TV. That usually means you almost never watch it alone.
After Sony’s rather successful cricketainment offering, Star wanted to see if they could stand out by simply going back to talking cricket. So, they introduced ‘The Dugout’ on the Select channel where experts would discuss techniques and tactics over advertising time. Simultaneously, they would look to widen the reach on their primary channels by adding many regional languages to their coverage. Hotstar, Star’s digital platform, also gained subscribers thanks to IPL.
Towards the end of the last coverage cycle, Star went back to a lot of the entertainment fanfare, integrating the promotion of upcoming Bollywood films in the match-day programme. Sony and Star were right in their own way, for the times they operated in. Everything they tried was lapped up due to their exclusivity.
VIEWERS HAVE CHOICE
But IPL 2023 will be a whole new world. For the first time, the remote control will truly be with the viewer. Last month, while giving a demo of their upcoming 4K IPL coverage, Viacom 18 took media and potential advertisers to a dark tunnel, specially created to represent a free fall of linear TV.
Viacom 18 reason they are simply highlighting the shift from TV to digital viewing in the country. “The honest truth is digital is already bigger than TV,” Anil Jayaraj, CEO, Viacom 18 Sports, said last month. “The IPL TV ratings have been coming down in the past few years.” It’s possible that dip could continue.
But not everyone in the industry is pessimistic about the future of sport on TV. “Despite the rapid growth of digital consumption in the last few years, the TV sports market is still expected to be more than 2x of the overall digital sports market in the medium-to-long-term,” this year’s KPMG report said.
Disney Star didn’t comment. Those in the know within the group though say despite Viacom’s free content strategy, the data costs fans must bear could be high. For now, 12 IPL matches will be aired on Star’s free-to-air channel.
Jio Cinema will also have a 4K offering. That’s how the common world feed involving 34 cameras and produced by BCCI will be shot. These pictures will then be dumbed down for HD viewing on TV.
Viacom’s standout feature will be hype mode viewing – multi-cameras and live stats – which was sampled during the football World Cup and WPL. The usual camera angles – stump cam, mid-wicket cam and spider cam are there – apart, for the first time a parallel remote control is handed to the viewer independent of the TV director’s directions.
“If you are watching Kohli bat on the stump cam and he’s standing outside his crease to the new ball, you will be able to spot it at the same time as the TV director. You don’t have to wait for the information to be relayed to the commentator’s ear after which it would be communicated to the viewer,” said an executive working on the project.
