31 crore people watched live broadcast of first 10 matches of IPL 2023: Sanjog Gupta

Disney Star has got a massive response to Tata IPL 2023, with ratings up by 29%. The broadcaster clocked a total of 8.7 billion minutes of consumption on TV for the opening match between Gujarat Titans and Chennai Super Kings, a massive 47% growth in comparison to last year [BARC, 2+ (Urban + Rural)]. 140 million viewers tuned in for the live broadcast on opening day, which included the Opening Ceremony with 130 million watching the first match involving Gujarat Titans and Chennai Super Kings [BARC, 2+ (Urban + Rural)]. Disney Star has seen a 29% growth in ratings with Tata IPL 2023 [BARC, Male 15+AB (Urban)].

As reported earlier, Star Sports’ build-up programming to Tata IPL 2023 has seen a sharp 62% increase over the previous year, reaching a staggering 205.6 million viewers. The total number of minutes watched have increased by a whopping 142% compared to last year, touching 21.5 billion minutes. In fact, the viewership (in million) and consumption (in billion minutes) of IPL Build-up programming is highest in the last three years.

As per a TAM Think Tank Series report, linear TV has helped IPL garner 530 million viewers, 200 advertisers in the last 5 years. According to Chrome DM, Star Sports reported opportunity to see (OTS) of 67.4% across cable and satellite homes. Across HSM markets, Star Sports Hindi 1 calculated its net OTS representing 61.47 million households out of 111.62 million C&S households. Star Sports network also witnessed a relatively higher connectivity in the Southern markets, where the OTS for Tamil, Kannada and Telugu channels come up at 93.4%, 89.8% and 91.0%, respectively.

In an exclusive interaction with Adgully, Sanjog Gupta, Head - Sports, Disney Star, candidly speaks about the intense comparison between linear TV and digital for eyeballs in the 16^th season of IPL, he sets the record straight on the TV numbers for IPL around three key data points – viewership, total watch time and TV concurrency. Excerpts:

There are a lot of numbers floating around IPL 2023, a lot of slicing and dicing of data is happening. Why don’t you set the record straight?

There are basically three key data points to look at. One is the total number of viewers who have tuned in to watch IPL on Star in the first eight days or 10 matches – that number stands at 31 crore, which makes it the highest level of viewership in terms of reach for the first 10 matches in the history of IPL, other than the two Covid years, and it puts it at the same level as 2019, which also had 31 crore. Without getting into one metric or the other metric or a complicated metric or some sort of derived metric – just look at how many people watched the first 10 matches of IPL. So, 31 crore people watched the first 10 matches or the live broadcast on the first eight days of IPL 2023. This, compared to any previous season on IPL, is equal to the highest other than those two Covid seasons, which were obviously exceptional seasons. So, this number has set or equalled a record that existed for 15 years of IPL.

The second number to look at, which is again the standard data point that most video content companies around the world follow and which is an indicator of how engaging your content was, is total watch time. The total watch time for the first eight days of the live broadcast of the first 10 matches of IPL 2023 was 6,230 crore minutes, which basically makes it the second highest level of watch time for the first eight days or 10 matches, after 2019. This is the second highest level of consumption or viewership that the IPL has had in its 16 editions, barring the Covid seasons, which are treated as an exceptional period.

The third and final data point, which is perhaps the only data point uniquely comparable to data points being published by competition, is the concurrency – the TV concurrency, which is basically the scale or highest level of viewership at any given point of time. If you look at this, 5.6 crore happens to be the peak concurrency. This was for the first match of IPL 2023, where 5.6 crore viewers were watching simultaneously concurrently at the same time. This happens to equal the peak concurrency achieved in the first eight days of IPL across seasons. It has equalled the record the record of 2019.

Concurrency is something that is being put in the public domain by the digital streamer, where you can see the concurrency minute by minute or second by second on the live game itself. In the first eight days of IPL 2023, the peak concurrency on digital for the streamer was 1.8 crore, while 5.6 crore was the peak TV concurrency. That. To my mind, is the big overall picture of what has been achieved in the first eight days, which, as we see it, suggest two things – one, the overwhelming response from fans to IPL, Star Sports and the combination of the two, and to reinstating the fact that live marquee sporting events have their home and are preferred to be watched on television as a destination . These are two big inferences that one can draw from the records that have been created by viewing figures of IPL 2023 on the Star network, as per BARC.

All of the data that I have shared with you is the total TV universe, there is no male or 15+ or urban – anyone who is basically tuned in to watch and anyone who happens to be a TV viewer is considered for this data.

Star had started out with 13 prime sponsors for IPL. Has this number climbed up as we are progressing in this tournament?

We are in active discussions for advertisers and sponsors to come on board. This started happening immediately after the opening day data. So, while conversations were already on, they have accelerated after the records were broken on opening day and that, I think, has galvanised the level of interest in IPL amongst advertisers, although I must add, opening day of IPL 2023 was sold out on Star Sports in terms of the inventory we had, but as was the case last year, there are certain marquee games that get sold out first and then the inventory on the rest of the tournament is sold. So, marquee games are already sold out; if you notice, the MI Vs CSK game last Saturday was also sold out, we were choc-a-bloc with inventory.

But yes, afternoon games, weekday games, some of the not-so-marquee games still have inventory left, which is pretty much the case as it was last year as well. You must acknowledge the fact that the level of inventory on IPL last year increase by 25%, because 60 matches became 74 matches. This 25% increase in inventory automatically means that not all inventory will be sold out, and that’s pretty much the situation that we find ourselves in this year as well, as does competition.

There are two observations on advertisers in IPL this year. First is that the edtech and e-commerce tech companies are not heavily invested in IPL this time; and second is that we are seeing the presence of quite a few brands from the Middle East markets. Your comments.

The tech companies are not invested anywhere, and not just in IPL! If I were to pull back and look at the trends, edtech companies have been muted on their ad spends in general – not just in IPL, but media and entertainment as well. Basically they want to lie low for two reasons – one, there is certain reputational challenge that they are facing and the second is that their funding is limited and they want to reduce costs. So, adspends from edtech companies have declined dramatically, which also means that it has declined or vanished entirely on sports in general and IPL in particular.

The e-commerce companies are also retrained in their spending, which is on account of them wanting to limit costs and also because of the feeling that they have enough demand for them to advertise in a big way.

The other sector which is not muted to the extent that e-commerce and edtech companies are, is Auto, because there is a gap in capacity and demand caused by the supply-chain issues from China, the inability to source chip sets. This basically means that automotive companies are currently just seeking to meet the demand that is already there and not really looking to create further demand, which anyone by virtue of advertising tries to do.

The sectors that continue to remain robust are fantasy and gaming, which continue to be big spenders, and have across streaming platform and linear platform increased investments. The seasonal advertisers, including the cola majors have also doubled down on IPL as a means of driving demand and exposure for their brands. Similarly, the seasonal consumer durables and white goods continue to advertise on IPL.

The overarching sentiment around advertising was perhaps muted between the months of October and January, largely on account of macro-economic factors, supply chain constraints, global reduction in ad spends and the level of inflation in the country, whic also meant that ad spends were restrained.

We’ve seen ad spends picking up from March 2023 onwards. So, some of that pick-up and rebound/ recovery of ad spends will benefit IPL, because IPL happens to be the biggest platform for advertisers in the months of April and May, which happen to coincide with the period of recovery of ad spends.

So, the start was slow due to the macro-economic environment and all the limiting factors on ad spends, including the funding crunch that start-ups were facing, but March onwards we have begun to see a real recovery in ad spends, which obviously will benefit IPL.

There has been heavy comparison of IPL numbers on JioCinema’s streaming platform vis-a-vis Star’s television platform. Why don’t you set the record straight?

I am in a position to only talk about the data which has either been published or is in the public domain. I don’t have access to JioCinema’s data. The three data points that have been put up till now in the public domain are the peak concurrency, which for JioCinema for the first eight days was 1.8 crore. The comparable number to that is peak concurrency on TV, which happens to be 5.6 crore, which is more than 3X of JioCinema’s peak concurrency, and happens to be the highest ever peak concurrency in the first 10 matches of an IPL.

The other number which can be compared to the peak concurrency of 1.8 crore for JioCinema was that the minimum concurrency for an IPL game on Star was 2.4 crore. Thus, the lowest concurrency on TV for the first game was actually higher than the peak concurrency on digital for the first eight matches. And that – the peak concurrency which is more than 3X and the minimum concurrency which is more than the peak concurrency in the first eight games on Digital – goes to show that there is significant viewership on both TV and digital, which bodes well for IPL, because at the end of the day both the streamer and the broadcaster want IPL to be watched and for IPL to go from strength to strength, because it is a five-year investment. So, we want the pie to grow and we believe that there is headroom for growth. We both want IPL to grow in popularity.

Viewership data, which is an indicator of consumer behaviour, suggests that TV is a wider and larger aggregator of audiences, it is better penetrated in terms of going beyond the urban centres, and it delivers much deeper engagement, which can be seen in the watch time and that concurrency that it has achieved. So, both in terms of the sheer aggregation of audiences as well as the engagement, TV is significantly larger than digital today.