Jio, the telecom giant in South Asia owned by Mukesh Ambani, is betting big on the Indian Premier League (IPL) to gain a larger share of India’s streaming market. Despite having over 425 million customers and being India’s top network provider, Jio’s additional services have yet to gain significant traction. However, with the IPL cricket tournament starting soon, Ambani sees this as the perfect opportunity to revamp Jio’s service adoption strategy. Viacom18, a venture between Reliance and Paramount, outbid Disney to secure five years of IPL’s streaming rights for the Indian subcontinent region with a sum of $3 billion. Unlike Disney’s Hotstar, which restricted access to IPL streaming to paid subscribers in recent seasons, Viacom18 is opening the floodgates for IPL games to everyone on the Jio network.
Ajit Mohan and Uday Shankar, Star India executives, made a strategic investment in cricket streaming nearly a decade ago that catapulted Hotstar to prominence as a household name. The platform drew over 100 million digital viewers during the two-month-long event year after year, with cricket alone solidifying Hotstar’s position at the pinnacle of the market. However, Disney’s decision last year to relinquish digital streaming bids in favor of securing television broadcast rights under the leadership of former CEO Bob Chapek left many industry insiders perplexed. The company has also decided not to renew the licensing rights for HBO content in India in a move that has understandably frustrated many Hotstar subscribers.
In 2016, as Reliance prepared to launch Jio, the company emerged as the first telecom operator to believe in Hotstar’s vision and commit to collaboration. Disney reaped significant benefits from Jio’s competitively priced data plans, which enabled tens of millions of Indian consumers to alter their internet consumption habits virtually overnight. Now, it appears that Reliance is shifting gears and focusing on its own interests. Jio has been assertively recruiting talent from Disney’s Hotstar, restructuring its infrastructure to accommodate a large user base. The company plans to provide 16 distinct feeds for IPL matches, featuring ultra-HD resolution and coverage in 12 languages.
Analyst group Media Partners Asia estimates that Jio Cinema, where Viacom18 plans to stream matches, will be able to drive sales of up to $350 million during the IPL season this year, up from $128 million in digital sales in 2022. The group marked down advertising sales on pay TV to $220 million, from $442 million last year. Reliance has “promised” advertisers that cricket streaming on Jio Cinema will reach 400 million users. Jio Cinema has also promised a concurrent user base of 100 million, nearly four times the current records, according to the analyst group.
Nonetheless, this underscores a considerable leap for Jio Cinema, which currently boasts fewer than 30 million monthly active users, as per data from mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Numerous industry executives have expressed skepticism regarding the likelihood of such a significant number of users transitioning to streaming on their smartphones when they have the option of watching games on their satellite televisions. Additionally, whether Jio Cinema can effectively manage the technical demands of tens of millions of viewers tuning in to cricket matches remains an open question for the time being.
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