Will TATA IPL be bigger and more exciting this year?

Tata IPL, the biggest entertainment of cricket, will kick off on March 26. A total of 70 league matches will be played across four international standard venues in Mumbai and Pune. IPL is seen more as a festival than a cricket tournament. The event brings a lot of joy and enthusiasm, especially among the youngsters. The Tata Indian Premier League 2022 will be played with a new format with the teams divided into two groups as the tournament gets underway in Mumbai and Pune, the IPL Governing Council has decided at its meeting held recently. There will be an addition of two new teams: the Gujarat Titans and the Lucknow Super Giants.

The IPL is the precursor for the mega T-20 world cup, scheduled to be held in Australia by the end of this year. Players will put their best foot forward to excel as the performance at the IPL will be the passport to be part of their national team. So, there will be high interest shown by the keen followers of the game for nearly two months. The IPL auction which was beamed live also garnered a good viewership as more than 50 million viewers were glued to the TV screens and handsets, according BARC data from subscribers.

During the last season, it cost about Rs 12.5 lakh for a 10-second slot.  Star is said to have generated Rs 3,000 crore from advertisement revenue last year and is hopeful of garnering an even better revenue this time as we can expect more brands to join with two new teams being part of the 15th IPL season. Historically, brands bet on IPL as it provides the maximum reach and allows you to address a young audience. Also, brands will be prudent in spending as they have the world cup T-20 to follow which should attract a big audience as it is played down under in Australia. With no major test matches scheduled during this calendar year, brands only have two big cricketing events to garner visibility.

The promotion of IPL and the activities from franchises have already commenced. In a few days’ time, the IPL buzz will get more intense as we near the start of the tournament. This year the BCCI has planned to allow 40% spectators to watch the match. For start-ups, IPL has always been a domain for them with their continuous presence. This year also we should have quite a few start-ups to be present as they need to create quick awareness and engage with a young audience. Being start-ups, they have a sizeable budget to spend. At the last IPL, e-commerce brands were the biggest spenders before and during the 14th edition. It is right now too early to give any kind of indication on what kind of brands will leverage the 15th edition of the IPL. Going by last year’s pattern, quite a number of brands will jump into the IPL platform but it will also depend a lot on the deals that the channel will be offering for brands to mull over and decide.

Brands galore

More brands will line up to advertise during IPL, both on TV and digital. Since IPL has a huge male audience, we can expect the strong presence of many male-centric brands such as real estate, edutech, automobiles, and fintech. The wider reach that it provides for over two months continuously will provide brands the attentive viewing and close engagement.

The popularity of IPL as an advertising platform continues to grow consistently over the years, with more and more brands spending extraordinary amounts of money to gain noticeability, says Gaurav Khanna - Associate Vice President, Hansa Research.

“Immense excitement is bubbling in the brands’ camps as not just the erstwhile teams but two freshly minted teams, viz. Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans, have surfaced on the landscape, making it more competitive as well as a literal bonanza for the advertisers. More teams mean more matches, more space to advertise and more ways to associate,” he adds.

Khanna enumerates this way:

  • More matches to play: With a higher count of teams, the match count from 60 in IPL 2021 has now jumped to 75 in upcoming season. This 25% rise in matches will result in higher TV viewership numbers which is expected to rise from 380 million last year to a projected figure of 450+ mn in IPL 2022.
  • More to advertise: The average advertising seconds per match has grown with every new IPL season, from a measly 5000 sec per match in 2016 to 9000 in 2018, 11000 in 2018 to a staggering 20,000+ in 2021. This number is expected to rise further in the current tournament.
  •  And, more ways to associate: The larger chunk of matches would not be between the 10 IPL franchises to win the Trophy, but would rather comprise of the bloodied battles between hundreds of brands vying for the holy grail – Consumer Attention! Every single IPL match offers an overabundance of OTS – 40 breaks between overs, 20+ on-ground ads, 25+ Astons, four strategic timeouts, plentiful fours & sixes, and innumerable brand appearances on various associated properties. Now multiply this by 75 matches over nine weeks and the count of brand OTS windows is mindboggling! Apart from TV, IPL fans will follow their team’s performance on TV, OTT, sports websites, social media, print and the very stadium itself, lending brands the opportunity to involve, impress and influence the consumer.

“And, with an enormous jump in IPL fan base and TV viewership from 380 million last year to a projected figure of 450+ mn in IPL 2022, needless to say the sentiment of brands advertising during this upcoming 15th season of IPL is  gung-ho and brand expectations are sky high and more than ever,” said Gaurav Khanna.

Brands are gung-ho about the biggest cricket extravaganza.

“We are optimistic that IPL will be a big hit this season too, After undergoing several challenges in the last two years due to the pandemic, IPL is making a larger comeback this time with two new teams and newer team compositions. Factors like these would indeed contribute to the interest of the brands largely,” said Keshav Bhajanka, Executive Director, Century Ply.

Bhajanka further added: “We are associating with the IPL for the third time in a row and expect to gain a satisfactory traction from the platform. We will be running ad campaigns during IPL for our innovative product with the aim of growing on the back of increased viewership and ad revenues."

"We are being one of the principal sponsors for SRH, this season. As a brand, we are trying to captivate the sentiments of our consumers, this is our way of reaching out to all and encourage people to take up sport. Also, our technologies such as QLED and MiniLED give you a feeling of watching the match on the ground. We are expecting that people will find this a way to enjoy the game more and cricket is a religion for us. As a brand, we are focused on giving out special offers this season too. We are expecting that as the lockdown is over we will definitely witness more excitement," says Vijay Kumar Mikkilineni, Marketing Head, TCL India.

Nikhil Rungta, Chief Growth Officer, Vedantu, adds: "We are thrilled to be associated with the biggest cricket events in the country. TATA IPL, as a property, is very popular among our target audience, which includes both students and parents. When it comes to cricket, we will have full attention and a less cluttered space to reach out to our audience and with IPL T20’s scale, higher impact and enhanced brand awareness comes hand in hand.”

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