IPL 2024: Cricket’s marquee tournament sees Star India and Reliance’s Viacom18 fighting it out; next year will be a very different story.
It’s IPL time again and there is a big battle for the advertising pie. Whether you are watching the marque tournament on television or on digital, the talk is on viewership or eyeballs. The larger that number is, the more likely is the ability of the medium to rake in more moolah.
This year is one with a bit of a difference. The Disney-owned Star India and Reliance Industries’ Viacom18 are fighting it out in the market at the most interesting time. In February, a mega $8.5 billion deal was inked between Reliance Industries and The Walt Disney Company to merge their digital and streaming assets in India. The former will hold a majority control in the new entity.
According to Balu Nayar, former MD of IMG and a key architect of IPL, one stronger entity will help streamline the rights. “As we’ve seen in the last IPL, the existence of streaming rights with one entity and linear television with another resulted in revenues that were significantly lower compared to a situation of one owning the combined rights,” he says.
Last year saw the two competing the same content and equivalent audience numbers for revenue from the same advertisers. “It was a complete buyer’s market, where advertising rates were negotiated lower and lower. That may not have affected Reliance much but for Disney, having spent a lot on both the acquisition of Star India and the IPL rights, it was a death knell.”
If things go to plan, the Reliance-Disney merger will be done by next year’s IPL and can drive home a hard bargain. “They would be in a far stronger position with respect to both advertisers and distribution partners, as this is traditional must-have content. In this case, we will see the rights for the IPL, BCCI and ICC with one entity and Sony having a minor component.”
Importantly, this year’s IPL will coincide with the Lok Sabha elections. By the looks of it, it will be an event with high viewership and a huge positive for the news business. A marketing head with a prominent advertiser is clear that media budgets will need to be balanced smartly.
“If the allocation was 80% for IPL in a non-election year, it could easily come down to 40% this time,” says the executive. There is a good chance that advertisers will come aboard the IPL bandwagon after the first few days of the league. After all, the stakes are huge. Cricket is India’s biggest sport and media rights for IPL are amongst the most expensive globally. That said, the auction concluded in 2022 saw the total outgo to acquire the media rights at over Rs 48,000 crore, which was a spike of 2.6x to the last round. When one is speaking of that kind of numbers, a battle royale for advertising revenue is only to be expected.