The IPL kicked off on March 22 and concluded on May 26. The Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad to win the title for the third time.
As per the Broadcast Audience Research (BARC) data, the official broadcaster Star Sports has clocked an audience reach of 546 million for 67 matches, with the data for the remaining seven still remaining.
According to sources privy to the development, official streamer JioCinema has touched an audience reach of 550–600 million towards the end of the tournament, though Viacom18 has not made the latest viewership data public.
In the previous edition of the tournament, the TV and digital reach stood at 505 million and 449 million on Star Sports and JioCinema, respectively.
Experts believe that the audience reach of the tournament is increasing due to the quality of matches coupled with measures by the media partners to take the IPL to the widest possible corner of the country.TAM Media CEO LV Krishnan said that there are three key factors that drove more audiences to the IPL.First, there was more in-home viewing this year, particularly in the North and West India, helped by the extreme heat wave, particularly in the last one month.
Secondly, the IPL drew a lot of new audiences due to the discovery of new younger players like Rinku Singh and Abhishek Sharma, whose performances were heavily highlighted on social media and news channels.
Thirdly, regular viewers were closely watching their favourite star players’ performances, enhancing time spent and engagement with the event.
“IPL 2024 is the biggest edition in the tournament’s history. The unduplicated audience reach of IPL on both TV and digital would be 650–675 million. There is almost a 70% overlap between the audiences that watch IPL on TV and digital,” he added.
D and P Advisory Managing Partner Santosh N said ad revenue growth has not kept pace with viewership increases due to the tightening of ad spend by new-age brands.
“Traditional advertisers have come to the rescue of the IPL, but they are also weighing their options between multiple properties,” he added.
A senior industry official said the ad spends on IPL have seen a healthy increase this year compared to last year, when the ad spend dropped to Rs 4,000 crore.
For IPL 2024, Disney Star was seeking Rs 167 crore for co-presenting and Rs 83 crore for associate sponsorships on standard-definition (SD) channels, Rs 71 crore for co-presenting, and Rs 35 crore for associate sponsorship on high-definition channels (HD).
The spot-buy rates for SD and HD were Rs 12.8 lakh per 10 seconds and Rs 5.45 lakh per 10 seconds, respectively.
On the other hand, Viacom18’s JioCinema was seeking Rs 200 CPM for 10-second midroll and pre roll mobile video ads, while FCT ad rates for live matches on mobile and connected TV were Rs 16 lakh and Rs 6.5 lakh, respectively.
The broadcaster was seeking investments of Rs 40 crore and Rs 30.5 crore for features such as Super 4s and Super 6s.
