IPL 2024: Disney and RIL vie for ad revenue one last time, but the General Elections can play spoilsport

The 2024 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is the last time two media giants—Disney-owned Star India and Reliance Industries’ (RIL)Viacom18—are fighting it out as rivals for a share of the advertising pie. After the announcement of the $8.5-billion deal in February, RIL’s media business and The Walt Disney Company will merge their India operations, with the former holding majority control. 

Cricket is India’s biggest sport, and media rights for IPL are among the most expensive globally. In 2022, they went for over Rs 48,000 crore for a five-year period, seeing an increase of 2.6x over the previous auction. Star has won the rights for television, while the digital segment was clinched by Viacom18. 

According to Balu Nayar, former MD of global sports and entertainment company IMG and a key architect of IPL, JioCinema (RIL’s OTT platform that streams IPL) and Disney competed with the same content (in IPL 2023) and equivalent audience numbers for revenue from the same advertisers. “It was completely a buyer’s market, and advertising rates came down sharply. It may not have affected Reliance very much, but for Disney, having already spent a lot on the acquisition of Star India, it sounded the death knell,” he says. To him, a combined RIL-Disney behemoth will be in a far stronger position with respect to both advertisers and distribution partners since IPL is “traditional, must-have content”.

Apart from IPL, the rights of BCCI and ICC events, too, will be with RIL-Disney. Nayar thinks that with advertisers, the focus will be around one viewing destination for cricket in India. 

Importantly, this year’s IPL coincides with the Lok Sabha elections—an event that has high viewership and is a positive for anyone in the news business. “A significant part of our media budget will need to be allocated for that event. If the allocation was 80% for IPL in a non-election year, it could easily come down to 40% this time,” says the marketing head at a large FMCG major, who declined to be identified. 

This year, however, IPL is likely to experience a sticky wicket on the advertising revenue front.  
     
@krishnagopalan