Ratings spiked to a new major highs for Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2020, with record-high audience numbers pushing the boundaries for revenue generation despite increasing spot-rates and sponsorship rates. All thanks to the digital delivery and monetization initiatives brought in by Star Network on their platform, Disney+ Hotstar.
After BCCI and VIVO suspended their partnership for 2020 owing to India-China border tensions, in came Dream11, an Indian fantasy cricket platform with Tencent as a major shareholder with 13%, who bid for the title sponsorship and won it with a bid of Rupees 2.2 billion, nearly 50% less than what VIVO had paid BCCI when they won the bid for a 5-year contract in 2018. However, VIVO is back as the primary sponsor for the 2021 edition to be held in India during April-May window.
Dream11, however, received a boost of almost 45% in traffic on it’s platform owing to a highly successful 2020 season, compared to 2019 IPL Final traffic.
Star India won the composite global media rights for IPL in 2017 for a 5-year period from 2018-2022, with 61.97 billion rupees for the TV rights and 1.44 billion rupees for digital delivery. As of early 2020, Star Network garnered 300+ million unique viewers through their subscription video-on-demand delivery service, Hotstar, now known as Disney+ Hotstar. IPL’s cost’s for 2020 were reduced by 35% and with revenue generation of around 40 million rupees from media rights and sponsorships.
IPL has literally pushed Hotstar to the top of the streaming services platforms since 2018, with 10.3 million simultaneous users during the live transmission of the Final match, with the delivery done over Akamai’s content delivery network. The numbers broke the record with ease in 2019, with close to 18.6 million simultaneous users. Star Network roped in new modes of monetization, with live matches augmented with virtual reality experience and giving opportunities for advertisers to engage the audiences.
Video consumption increase across digital platforms across the globe prompted advertisers to sign up despite advertising rates increasing for a 10-second window to 12.5 million rupees in 2020, a significant increase from 10 million rupees in 2018 and 12 million rupees in 2019. 90% of TV advertising slots were booked by advertisers even before the start of the 2020 edition of IPL held in United Arab Emirates.
Star India booked 13 associate sponsors and 5 co-presenting sponsors for the 2020 edition, with associate sponsors charged between 50-60 million rupees and co-presenting sponsors charged between 100-120 million rupees. Close to 14 billion rupees were generated in overall revenues due to increase in associate/co-presenting sponsors, with the 2019 edition having only 13 overall sponsors for the entire season.
Another aspect targeted by the network was to cater to non-hindi speaking audiences in the southern region of the country, with offerings in 5-local regional languages attributing to 28% increase in viewership, in terms generating close to 26 billion rupees in advertising through linear TV channels and close to 6 billion rupees in advertising from digital channels (majority of the revenue generated through Hotstar subscriptions and language choices available on the platform).
