With a whopping $2.7 billion, Mukesh Ambani's Viacom18 won the exclusive digital rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL), one of the most popular sporting events in the world, for the 2023–2027 cycle. The company just revealed that IPL matches will be streamed on JioCinema.
Before, Disney+ Hotstar held the rights to stream IPL matches, and it promoted this feature heavily to attract subscribers as one of the platform's selling points. JioCinema is following a different strategy and is expected to provide free streaming to its subscribers, which means viewers will not be required to pay to watch IPL matches.
The opening match of the IPL 2023, between the Gujarat Titans and Chennai Super Kings, is scheduled on March 31.
In addition to providing content for free, JioCinema is anticipated to improve the user experience by providing 4K streaming at 60 frames per second as compared to the 1080p content provided by Disney+ Hotstar. Users will have the option to choose between various camera angles.
Also, the company will provide live match information including pitch heat maps and wagon wheels. There are 12 languages available for viewers to choose from, including Hindi, English, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, and more. The selected language will be used to display all commentary, scores, and statistics.
As per reports JioCinema wants to make the matches available to as many people as it can in order to generate revenue from advertisements. The IPL, which will last for close to eight weeks, is projected to attract over 550 million viewers, according to company executives.
“We believe the IPL moving away from paid content is a potential threat to TV advertising in the medium term. It would be difficult for Viacom18-Jio Cinema to recover even 50% of its content acquisition cost via the digital route if the content is free at least in the near term. However, in the medium to long term, change in consumption habits and growing Smart TV penetration would lead to digital ad revenue moving closer to TV advertising, if IPL content remains free of charge,” according to a report by Elara Capital.
According to a report by e4m, JioCinema has partnered with 3 lakh housing societies in major cities, 25,000 restaurants, and 10,000 colleges throughout the nation that use JioFiber broadband to stream IPL matches as part of its plan to reach viewers.